The US met with Iranian officials today, one of whom is directly involved in the violence in Iraq according to CNN’s Michael Ware.

“While the US ambassador is sitting there, talking about Iranian special forces units helping Iraqis to kill Americans, he’s talking to an Iranian ambassador who’s a member of that Iranian special forces unit, according to Western intelligence.”

The Iranians probably put that ambassador in the room just to provoke us, or to laugh at us after the fact. And we do nothing about it, or the hundreds of American troops who have been killed by Iranian weapons in Iraq.

Our position in Iraq has become absurd. Those who are pressuring our government to meet with the Iranians never bring up the fact that Tehran is presently holding Americans hostage and forcing them to “confess” on Iranian TV. They never acknowledge that the Iranians’ interests in Iraq don’t now and never will converge with ours. We are in Iraq in part to democratize the Middle East, which is definitely not in the totalitarian mullahs’ interests. And the critics never acknowledge that their own pressure applied on our government to chat with the Iranians, while never acknowledging that Iran has been a major bad actor in Iraq, gives the Iranians the upper hand in negotiations. The Iranians know that they’re dealing with an enemy that is divided and unsure of itself.

Yet here we are, meeting with the Iranians as though tea and crumpets will solve the war that they have been waging on us via Hezbollah and even by alliance with al Qaeda itself for thirty years. It’s all absurd. They are driven by their Islamic revolutionary zeal, and we are the “Great Satan.” And that’s just the way it is. Talking won’t solve that.

We aren’t suffering in Iraq because we have been too aggressive toward Iran, as the critics would have it. We’re suffering in Iraq because we have been pushovers in the face of Iranian aggression, giving them whatever they want while we stand with our tail between our legs.