Anonymous WH sources confirm that release of Iran second site intel was not a 'brilliant negotiating ploy' but rather the ad lib I thought it was - but regardless, some are still opining that this plays right into Obama's hands - I don't see that - of course there is a scenario where that could prove true, but much more likely as far as I'm concerned is that this revelation forces Obama into a very tight spot and raises some troubling question viz his 'ingratiating' approach to the Iran problem - I'm not at all convinced that striding to the podium yesterday with France and England to call Iran out was a good idea, not if you're unwilling or unable to back up tough talk with tough actions - but I imagine they felt they had to do it in order preempt Iran's attempts to frame the context of the upcoming negotiations - that troubles me, that indicates to me that they're risking way too much on the negotiations being successful.
Related: every story reports on how getting Russia and China to cooperate is key to getting a deal done but then they don't delve into why Russia and China might be unwilling to play along - the why would tell them that the odds of the outliers cooperating are not good and even if they do cooperate it will undoubtedly be because the sanctions have been watered down to the point of being effectively useless or because they've been promised something that very likely will come back to haunt further on down the road.
