Tehran has gained recognition of its big power status from a conversation between its senior negotiator Jalili and the EU’s Catherine Ashton without even having to attend the next negotiating session in Moscow.

The spokesman for the EU’s Catherine Ashton reported Monday night, June 11 that Tehran had agreed to discuss high-grade uranium enrichment in Moscow on June 18-19. debkafile: That claim is false; Iran refuses to put enrichment on the table. But the US-EU sham puts diplomacy on artificial life support, away from the only remaining option of a military strike - either by the US, to which President Barack Obama is committed if all other options fail, or Israel, with US backing.

Binyamin Netanyahu, freed from the shackles of an election campaign, is more empowered by his new expanded coalition tackling Iran’s nuclear threat by military measures. The Obama administration must think up new devices for holding him down.