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Bloggers analyze talks between Iran and the United States over Iraq, question the effectiveness of sanctions against Sudan, and retch at a new reality show about organ donation.

27 years later: The Iranian and U.S. ambassadors to Iraq met Monday to discuss the security situation in Iraq, ending a 27-year diplomatic freeze. The negotiators reportedly stayed away from sensitive issues like Iran’s nuclear efforts. Bloggers wonder whether it’s all wasted words.

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Liberal Matthew Yglesias doubts that talks over Iraq can accomplish anything as long as the two nations are so fundamentally at odds: “Insofar as our goals in the Middle East include overthrowing the regime in Tehran and, short of regime change Cheap Hale Bob Dresses, doing everything possible to destroy the Iranian economy then Discount Bandage dresses, naturally enough, the Iranians are going to seek to thwart our goals.” California liberal D-Day agrees that the United States can’t just ignore everything but Iraq: “Iraq can be a launching pad for negotiations Replica White Herve leger, a way to build consensus and trust so that the other issues can be brought into play, but it can’t be the only issue. Otherwise the cries of ‘Iran would never help the United States’ become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Liberal Middle Eastern-studies professor Juan Cole at Informed Comment argues that there’s plenty Iran and the United States can agree on. Both count al-Qaida and the Baathists as enemies, and both want to see the Shiite government succeed. Cole also dismisses claims that the talks are futile: “Effective diplomacy can often lead a country to see the advantages of cooperation on some issues, so that its leaders stop sulking and actually turn to accomplishing something.”

Cernig at The Newshoggers is pessimistic about cooperation with Iran: “Talking is almost always vastly preferable to bombing. However Replica Christian Audigier Clothes, I’ve a nasty feeling that these talks will Cheap Bandage dresses, eventually, go nowhere—and will then be held up as evidence of Iiran’s lack of amenablility to diplomacy by pro-war Bush administration memebers and their enablers.” Joshuapundit is skeptical of Iranian offers to coordinate security efforts: “[A]fter doing their best to create chaos in Iraq, the Iranians now want to be deferred to as equal partners in any solutions!”

Self-described “radical Republican” Ronald Barbour at The Freedom Fighter’s Journal doesn’t take issue with the talks so much as the timing: “[I]t is flat out obscene that the talks were held on Memorial Day. There are Americans at gravesides today mourning loved ones who were cut down by Iranian-backed militias.”

Read more about the talks.

Soft power: President Bush announced that the United States will step up economic sanctions on Sudan to force the country to stop the violence in Darfur. The effort will tighten regulations on roughly 100 Sudanese businesses and will single out two government officials and one rebel leader responsible for violence.

Drima, a Sudanese-born college student at The Sudanese Thinker, praises Bush’s decision to include rebel leaders among the targets but has “mixed feelings”: “The first sanctions imposed on Sudan since the Clinton era didn’t succeed in accomplishing anything much besides making life for the average Sudanese citizen harder and more difficult. Are these new sanctions going to be any different?”

Some predict the sanctions could do more harm than good politically. Sean-Paul Kelley at The Agonist predicts the sanctions won’t make “a whit of difference” in Darfur: “What they will do, however, is push Sudan further into China’s orbit.” At Counterterrorism Blog Discount Christian Audigier Clothing, Douglas Farah laments that the plan doesn’t affect businesses with connections to China: “China aid and investment has become one of the most corrosive forces on the African continent, a free and almost unlimited supplies of cash for dictators, thugs and murderous regimes.”

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