News

The Western world knows Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the rabble-rouser, the Holocaust denier and the election-rigger. The Iranian president did nothing to dispel this image during his United Nations speech last week, with his anti-Semitic allusions and rambling indictment of capitalism. However, as the United States and other leading powers prepare to sit at the negotiating table with Iran this week, they'll come to know another version of Ahmadinejad -- a leader propelled by weakness at home, who will say he is willing to talk but may offer only tantalizing, unconvincing proposals.

For the Obama administration, which has made engaging with adversarial states a principle of its foreign policy, one of the biggest challenges will not be a belligerent Iran, but a disingenuous one.