Contrary to what you may believe, the picture is not the cast of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, it is the leadership of a vicious Third World kleptocracy that our president has attempted to ingratiate himself with.

According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, as reported by the Times of Israel, shortly after Barack Obama became president he opened secret talks with Iran which essentially gave them just about everything they have been trying to achieve on the diplomatic front in return for bupkis.

Soon after he took office, President Barack Obama began a process ultimately designed to reestablish full US diplomatic relations with Iran, including a reopening of embassies, an Israeli daily reported Sunday. The initiative, part of a wider shift in America’s diplomatic orientation, aimed at reaching understandings with Tehran over suspending its nuclear program, Maariv claimed, citing “two Western diplomats very close to the administration.”

The initiative led to at least two US-Iran meetings, the report said. Israel was made aware of the contacts, and opposed them.

But Iran rebuffed the “diplomatic hand” offered by the White House, Maariv reported. The Islamist regime “opposed any sign of normalization with the US, and refused to grant a ‘prize’ to the Americans,” according to an anonymous Israeli source quoted by the paper.

Apparently the Iranians have attended the Palestinian school of diplomacy where “never miss a chance to miss a chance” is the guiding principle. More than likely they correctly gauged Obama as a weak, ineffectual, vacillating shadow of a man and decided they could ultimately wring a better deal out of him.

According to more recent reports the Obama regime seems to have been trying this again probably with the view of using it as something of an October Surprise hoping that caving in to another dictator would make everyone forget about the slow moving train wreck that has been our foreign policy over the last four years.

The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.

Iranian officials have insisted that the talks wait until after the presidential election, a senior administration official said, telling their American counterparts that they want to know with whom they would be negotiating.

News of the agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and the weekend before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.

During the last debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Obama gave a nonsensical critique of Romney’s statements on the travesty that is our policy in North Africa and the Middle East. As part of his apologia for overthrowing a toothless despot and turning Libya and its oil income over to al Qaeda which included this point:

“Imagine if we had pulled out at that point? Moammar Gadhafi had more American blood on his hands than any other individual other than Osama bin Laden. So we were going to make sure we finished the job.”

Presumably he meant by this the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270 passengers, crew, and bystanders.

While this was not the most disingenuous statement made by Obama it had a certain poignancy. The CIA and DIA are certain that Pan Am 103 was blown up by the Iranian government using Libyan operatives for the purpose. While Obama was sitting there chiding Mitt Romney over how righteous the overthrow of Qaddafi was, he was negotiating a virtual diplomatic surrender with the regime that sacked our Tehran embassy, held 52 Americans hostage or 444 days, and was the force behind the Pan Am 103 bombing.