So, looking at the headlines this morning . . .

Jobless Claims Bounce Higher

U.S. economy contracts for first time since recession

Chinese Cyber Hackers a Growing Threat

U.S. faces new Al Qaeda threat as terror group’s ‘strike map’ is revealed

Report: Iran, Hezbollah terror threat rising

Iran Is Said to Be Set to Accelerate Uranium Enrichment

Syria, Iran threaten retaliation against Israel

And what’s going on at the White House?

Mark Knoller: “Today at the White House: No public events on the president’s schedule today, though Vogue is bringing camera gear into the White House this morning.”

Beautiful day for a photo-op, isn’t it?

One simple question for the upcoming Hagel hearings: would a Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel be willing to order U.S. forces to either assist Israel in a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, or order U.S. forces to execute that strike directly?

(I foresee in the comments section many folks arguing the merits of the idea, but the point is separate from that debate; the point is whether or not Hagel is able to enact options that the president himself has repeatedly stated are “on the table.” Or is the president announcing, with Hagel, that those options are no longer on the table?)

If the answer to either of those is “no” – that Hagel’s conscience and personal policy beliefs mean he could not, in good conscience, give either of those orders, and that he would resign rather than carry out an order from the president to do that — then we have a Secretary of Defense who is going to have to be replaced in the event of a crisis along these lines. It’s a bad idea to have a Secretary of Defense who can only serve the president as long as the president forecloses certain already-discussed options.

The first Morning Jolt of a critical week is now off to the editors, on its way to you this morning. A preview:

Tonight’s Fun Topic: So, Who’s Ready for Direct Negotiations With Iran?

Hey, remember when President Obama agreed to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions?

Liberals swooned, and his campaign had to emphasize that he didn’t mean what everyone saw him say.

I like to point out the expiration dates of Obama’s statements, but maybe he got this one in just before the deadline:

WASHINGTON — The question of whether the United States should seek to engage Iran in one-on-one talks on its nuclear program joined the likely topics for Monday’s final presidential debate as supporters of President Obama and Mitt Romney jousted on Sunday over the issue.

The prospect of such talks was raised in an article published over the weekend by The New York Times that said Iran and the United States had agreed in principle to direct talks after the presidential election.

On Saturday, the White House denied that a final agreement on direct talks had been reached, while saying that it remained open to such contacts. On Sunday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry dismissed the report.

But if the report proved to be true, said a supporter of Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate, Iran’s motives should be seriously questioned.

“I hope we don’t take the bait,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think this is a ploy by the Iranians” to buy time for their nuclear program and divide the international coalition, he said.

A supporter of Mr. Obama, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on the same program that the tough international sanctions the president helped marshal against Iran might be bearing fruit exactly as hoped, forcing Iran to blink.

“This month of October, the currency in Iran has declined 40 percent in value,” Mr. Durbin, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said. “There is unrest in the streets of Tehran, and the leaders in Iran are feeling it. That’s exactly what we wanted the sanctions program to do.”

The Times, citing unnamed senior Obama administration officials, reported over the weekend that after secret exchanges, American and Iranian officials had agreed in principle to hold one-on-one negotiations between the nations, which have not had official diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Ah, “secret exchanges” with Iran. So we’ve already been negotiating with them; the Obama administration just didn’t want to share that fact with the American people.

Heck of a setup for Mitt Romney for tonight: “Mister President, just what has your administration offered Iran in these secret negotiations?”

Obama’s options here are to answer, “there are no secret negotiations,” to which Romney will ask if the New York Times is just making this all up; to answer the question honestly (stop laughing) or to acknowledge that contacts have been made, but that he refuses to get into the details because the matter is sensitive.

Actually, Obama will probably try to blur the line between the publicly known multi-lateral negotiations and these newly revealed/disputed secret bilateral negotiations, and sprinkle in some of his 2008-era it-takes-a-strong-man-to-be-willing-to-negotiate happy talk.

You’ll recall in that 2008 debate answer, “the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.” Well, sometimes talking to them isn’t punishment, either, and sometimes it’s just the stalling tactic they want – or worse.

Somehow this reminds me of our bold effort to negotiate with the Taliban. Hey, how did that one turn out?

With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal…

The failure to broker meaningful talks with the Taliban underscores the fragility of the gains claimed during the surge of American troops ordered by President Obama in 2009. The 30,000 extra troops won back territory held by the Taliban, but by nearly all estimates failed to deal a crippling blow.

Critics of the Obama administration say the United States also weakened its own hand by agreeing to the 2014 deadline for its own involvement in combat operations, voluntarily ceding the prize the Taliban has been seeking for over a decade. The Obama administration defends the deadline as crucial to persuading the Afghan government and military to assume full responsibility for the country, and politically necessary for Americans weary of what has already become the country’s longest war.

There was a bipartisan consensus in favor of negotiating with the Taliban, but that consensus didn’t extend to millions of Americans with no foreign-policy experience, who probably could summarize their sensibilities in just a few sentences: “They’re the Taliban, and they’re trying to kill our soldiers. Why do we think we can trust them to keep their word? And if we can’t trust them to keep their word on their end of the agreement, why are we negotiating with them?”

This morning, The New York Times offers a lengthy look at President Obama’s relationship with leaders in the Arab world, full of revealing detail. It never quite comes out and explicitly says the president’s approach has failed, but the overall picture is withering and bleak.

Among the highlights:

• Obama ignored “advice from elders on his staff at the State Department and at the Pentagon” in calling for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to step down.
• But by the time the Saudis were crushing democracy protests in Bahrain, Obama had changed his mind, and “largely turned a blind eye.”
• By the time the Tunisian protests broke out in January 2011 — an angry Mr. Obama accused his staff of being caught “flat-footed.”
• The tensions between Mr. Obama and the Gulf states, both American and Arab diplomats say, derive from an Obama character trait: he has not built many personal relationships with foreign leaders. “He’s not good with personal relationships; that’s not what interests him,” said one United States diplomat. “But in the Middle East, those relationships are essential. The lack of them deprives D.C. of the ability to influence leadership decisions.”  
• Arab officials echo that sentiment, describing Mr. Obama as a cool, cerebral man who discounts the importance of personal chemistry in politics. “You can’t fix these problems by remote control,” said one Arab diplomat with long experience in Washington. “He doesn’t have friends who are world leaders. He doesn’t believe in patting anybody on the back, nicknames.“You can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish” with such an impersonal style, the diplomat said.
• Perhaps most significantly, “Months later, administration officials said, Mr. Obama expressed regret about his muted stance on Iran.”
  

Let’s set the wayback machine to June 16, 2009: “President Obama said Tuesday that it would be counterproductive for the United States “to be seen as meddling” in the disputed Iranian presidential election, dismissing criticism from several leading Republicans that he has failed to speak out forcefully enough on behalf of the Iranian opposition.”

So the Republican critics were right, and President Obama was wrong. Now he sees it.

Obama 2012: Because he now realizes where he botched his Iran policy early on!

The article summarizes, “the stark difference between the outcomes in Cairo and Bahrain illustrates something else, too: his impatience with old-fashioned back-room diplomacy, and his corresponding failure to build close personal relationships with foreign leaders that can, especially in the Middle East, help the White House to influence decisions made abroad.”

SecureAmericaNow.org is sending this message to “about a million” Jewish voters today:

The message is direct:

Prime Minister Netanyahu is fighting for the very survival of the Jewish State: “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

But Obama responded, “NO red lines”for Iran. Then, president Obama refused to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu but invited Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi to the United States.

Click here to sign the petition and tell President Obama to STAND WITH ISRAEL.

Plenty of folks who study the Jewish vote in U.S. elections point out that American Jews have more concerns than just the state of Israel. But when the security of Israel seems particularly perilous — an Iranian nuclear program continuing to grow, neighboring Syria descending into chaos with a hostile ruler increasingly desperate and willing to threaten the unthinkable, and of course, now neighboring Egypt’s new rulers taking a distinctly anti-Western, anti-American turn . . . maybe Jewish voters’ hierarchy of priorities shifts a bit.

The RNC argues that Obama adviser David Plouffe and his lawyer either missed or ignored plenty of evidence that he was speaking for a company with a lot of business ties to the Iranian regime:

Plouffe’s Fluff: We Vetted The Company Before In December 2010 Going To MTN, Which Is Linked To The Iranian Regime…

White House officials said in an e-mail that Plouffe referred the proposed speech to his lawyer for review before accepting the invitation. The e-mail said Plouffe’s lawyer advised that MTN’s business dealings did not raise any issues “that would weigh against acceptance of the proposed speaking engagement.” (The Washington Post, 8/6/12)

What Plouffe Apparently Found Acceptable (Simple Google Search At The Time Would Have Shown)…

6/24/09: Reuters: “S.Africa’s MTN Denies Report Iran Network Blocked”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/24/iran-election-mtn-idUSLO29259220090624

“MTN network is running in Iran and there is nothing wrong with it,” MTN Group spokeswoman Nozipho Januray-Bardill said. Local media reported on Wednesday that MTN may lose at least a month’s revenue in Iran, its third largest market, after the government blocked cellular network signals following a disputed June 12 election. The Iranian government blocked SMS text messages during polling after opposition candidates used them to galvanise key young voters during a fiercely contested election campaign, and Internet and mobile phone communications have been severely disrupted since. Domestic and international media have also been restricted. MTN Group owns 49 percent of MTN Irancell, which was launched in late 2006 as Iran’s No. 2 cellular operator. Some investors deemed the expansion risky, given the country’s nuclear stand-off with the West. MTN, which operates mobile phone networks across Africa and the Middle East, has more than 16 million customers in Iran and says the country has major growth potential.

8/3/09: Los Angeles Times: “Iran Court Warns Against Criticizing Proceedings”

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/03/world/fg-iran-trials3

The nation is bracing for further confrontations between security forces and supporters of Mousavi this week as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s parliament confirm Ahmadinejad for a second term. One of the country’s main cellphone operators, Irancell, co-owned by South Africa’s MTN, warned customers Sunday that it would be suffering unspecified “technical” problems over the next three days, which coincide with the anticipated unrest.

5/26/08: New York Times: “MTN Search For Partner Could Face Obstacles From U.S.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/technology/26iht-funding.4.13225954.html?pagewanted=all

Having broken off talks with one suitor and quickly found another, the South African mobile phone operator MTN Group could still face obstacles to any deal from an unlikely corner: U.S. regulators, who prevent American companies from facilitating business in Iran, one of MTN’s fastest growing markets. … MTN’s business in Iran is new but growing quickly. At the end of 2007, MTN had six million subscribers in Iran, about 9 percent of its total customers, up from just 154,000 at the end of 2006. Revenue from Iran increased 1,642 percent in the 12 months ended December and now represents 2 percent of overall revenue. MTN also had 2.1 million customers in Sudan at the end of 2007, where the United States and the European Union have imposed some restrictions, and 3.1 customers million in Syria, where the United States has some financial restrictions. Sudan contributed 2 percent of 2007 revenues, and Syria 6 percent.

Eh… look, the lawyer’s job is probably to find things that will get Plouffe arrested. There is no law that bans former campaign managers and soon-to-be White House staffers from accepting large speaking fees from companies that do a lot of business in Iran, with the approval of the regime. Of course, “legal” is not the same as “a good idea.”

The bigger lesson from this is that in between his campaign work and his White House work, David Plouffe wasn’t that worried about the business ties or the moral character of who paid him. That’s perfectly legal – and completely against the message and professed ideals of the campaign that he managed in 2008.

Vice President Biden, today: “When we took office, let me remind, there was virtually no international pressure on Iran. We were the problem,” the vice president said. “We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe.”

Of course, the facts are that the United Nations Security Council passed five resolutions against Iran between July 2006 and September 2008, banning the import of nuclear-related materials, freezing assets, expanding the freeze of assets, calling for the search of Iranian ships and planes, and so on.

Then, of course, throughout President Bush’s final year in office, diplomatic efforts generated new levels of pressure on Tehran.

March 2008: “The UN security council today approved a third round of sanctions against Iran with near unanimous support, sending a strong signal to Tehran that its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment is unacceptable and becoming increasingly costly. For the first time, the resolution bans trade with Iran in goods that have both civilian and military uses. It also authorises inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying banned items.”

June 2008: “Even as Bush won new support from the Europeans, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran responded by mocking attempts to rein in his country’s nuclear program, which Iran maintains is for peaceful development of nuclear energy.”

June 23, 2008: “European Union states agreed on June 23 to impose new sanctions on Iran, including an asset freeze on its biggest bank, over its refusal to meet demands to curb its nuclear programme.”

In August 2008: “The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany have agreed to seek further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program after the Islamic state missed a deadline to respond to council incentives, the State Department said Monday.”

And then in October 2008, “Australia has imposed targeted autonomous sanctions in relation to Iran’s proliferation sensitive nuclear and missile programs and efforts to contravene United Nations Security Council sanctions.”

So besides the ugly, knee-jerk claim that until President Obama took office, the United States was “the problem” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, Biden is just plain wrong on the facts.

But hey, at least Obama can tout the tough new sanctions in place today, and how his diplomacy has unified the world on cutting off Iran… oh, wait, what’s that on foreign television?

Ah, an Iranian trade delegation visiting Indian officials in New Dehli, discussing ways to “overcome U.S. and European sanctions.”

Then again, Jeanne Kirkpatrick warned us about Biden’s type: “They always blame America first.”

UPDATE: The Romney campaign distributes Policy Director Lanhee Chen on Vice President Biden’s comments on Iran that “we were the problem.”

“All too often, President Obama and his administration have sought to blame America first, yet Vice President Biden’s reckless statement today blaming America for – of all things – the progress of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, has reached a new low. The problem is not America.  It is the ayatollahs who oppress their people, threaten their neighbors, and are pursuing nuclear weapons. President Obama’s naïve approach to Iran has given the regime valuable time to get closer than ever before to a nuclear weapons capability. Vice President Biden’s comments are wrong and completely inappropriate. Mitt Romney will stand up for America and our allies, and he will not apologize for America’s leadership role in the world.”

At this point, mocking Chris Matthews for sounding unhinged is a cliché, as Jonah observed last week. But tonight the face of MSNBC seemed to have a particularly bizarre and conspiratorial talking point, that most of the Republican contenders, except for Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, are itching for war for “Biblical” reasons.

“I don’t want to think about the promises this crowd will make down South about bombing Iran and going into war . . . These guys are making crazy, Biblical commitments about going to war with Iran.”

(Has Matthews noticed the tensions in the Strait of Hormuz? Has he noticed Obama’s former special assistant on Iran, Dennis Ross, now telling reporters that Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons if sanctions and diplomacy fail? Does he feel that potential military conflict with Iran exists only in the minds of Republicans?)

Matthews had a Huntsman surrogate, Pennsylvania senator and Vietnam veteran Tom Ridge, as his guest, and asked him why the veterans in the GOP field tended to oppose war (he seemed to imply Huntsman was a veteran; Huntsman is not, but his sons are in the armed services) and asked why the “chickenhawks” are always looking to start a war. “Your party always seems to have a war on the on-deck circle. It’s always Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya.”

(Er, who committed U.S. forces to Libya? And all of one Democrat voted against U.S. military action in Afghanistan.)

“We have to do this for some Armageddon reason.”

Ridge responded that was hyperbolic, and Matthews responded, “When is the last time they haven’t had one? Bush went to Iraq the first time, Reagan went to Grenada . . .”

Er, and Clinton committed U.S. military forces to Haiti and the Balkans.

Matthews concluded his rant with the succinct summary, “Maybe I’m overstating it, but it’s a fact.”

Is this a trial balloon for some new line of attack from the Obama campaign and the DNC?

A short taste from the Monday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Iran Warms Up to Obama’s Outreach by Naming New ‘Ambassador’

Unfortunately, this new ambassador is metal and drops bombs: “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday inaugurated the country’s first domestically built long-range unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an ‘ambassador of death’ to Iran’s enemies. Speaking to a group of officials, Ahmadinejad said, ‘The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship.’ The goal of the aircraft is to ‘keep the enemy paralyzed in its bases,’ he said, adding that the jet is for deterrence and defensive purposes.”

You know how we know Ahmadinejad is crazy? He says things like that with a straight face.

As Jim Hoft summarizes the incongruity, “Ahmadinejad Declares New Bomber Drone the ‘Messenger of Salvation & Dignity for Humanity.’”

Having said that, we have to give the Iranians a smidgen of credit.  “Ambassador of death” is just an awesome name for a weapon. It sounds like it ought to be written on the side of a Klingon warship or be a Bond henchman’s nickname.

“Welcome, Mr. Bond! Have you met the Ambassador of Death?”

BLAM! “I’m afraid he’s persona non grata.”

It figures that a nation whose early defining moment was illegally attacking an embassy would call its new weapon an ambassador.