Obama and Ahmadinejad: The Politics of Face Time

[Mosby]

WASHINGTON — It was just over two years ago that Barack Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois with aspirations to the presidency, famously pronounced during a Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., that he would be willing to hold direct talks, without preconditions, with the president of Iran.

This week, President Obama will have the chance to do just that, when Iran’s fiery, diminutive, Israel-bashing, legitimacy-challenged president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joins Mr. Obama and other world leaders who are descending on New York City to speak at the first United Nations General Assembly in the new kinder, gentler, Barack Obama era.

And guess what? Administration officials will be doing everything in their power to make sure the two don’t get within spitting distance of each other.

“You’ve got to get the Secret Service to put stumbling blocks in the way,” said Ray Takeyh, who until last month was a senior adviser for Iran at the State Department in the Obama administration. “You’ve got to quarantine that off. You’ve got to get the sniffing dogs out. You’ve got to make sure to avoid any kind of chance encounter with Ahmadinejad.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/weekinreview/20cooper.html?ref=middleeast