This man is either a fool or a liar

...you be the judge.

Visiting Tokyo to meet with senior Japanese officials, (Iran's chief nuclear negotiator) Saeed Jalili said his country's nuclear program is for civilian purposes, although the U.S. and other nations fear its goal is to produce weapons.

He's a fool if he has this negotiator's job but is so out-of-the-loop that he doesn't know what his countrymen in the Pasdaran (Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; IRGC) are up to; he's a liar if he does know.

Bets are, he knows. Everyone else seems to...

In Paris on Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the international community has no other choice but to impose new U.N. sanctions on Iran for its refusal to cooperate on its nuclear program.

Kouchner said Russia was already "on board" with the need for sanctions, and that he believed "the Chinese will follow."

"I think there is no other solution," Kouchner told journalists.

America's top military officer agreed Monday that Tehran shows no sign of backing down in the standoff and said that military force must therefore remain an option.

"My belief remains that political means are the best tools to attain regional security and that military force will have limited results," Adm. Mike Mullen wrote in an annual assessment of the nation's risks and priorities. "However, should the president call for military options, we must have them ready."

On a more positive note, it appears that our Foreign Minister is not taking the bait:

Earlier in the day, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada expressed his "strong concerns" to Jalili over the current situation regarding Iran's nuclear program, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.

I'd rather see an embargo, but "strong concerns" and a serious role in the UNSC-ordered sanctions regime are probably all that are possible for now.

The shame of it all is that someone decided to let S. Jalili into Japan at all, much less for a five day trip... including a propaganda stop at Hiroshima... Here's hoping the local mass media camps on this fellow with cameras rolling and catches him saying something ...impolitic... as he tours the Shrine to American Guilt Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Yes, laughter and pointing at the pictures would qualify as "impolitic".