Obama Beginning To Realize An Unclenched Fist Won't Help Relations With Iran?

The money quote from the New York Times:

Ray Takeyh, a former Iran adviser to the Obama administration, said administration officials were learning from experience.

“There was a thesis a year ago that the differences between the United States and Iran was subject to diplomatic mediation, that they could find areas of common experience, that we were ready to have a dialogue with each other,” Mr. Takeyh said, but “those anticipations discounted the extent how the Iranian theocracy views engagement with the United States as a threat to its ideological identity.”

In other words, we are the Great Satan.

Iran's ideological identity is defined by it's opposition to the United States, no matter who the President is, or what he does.

And, look at how far Obama was willing to go to unclench his fist:

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama declared himself open to dialogue even with intransigent states like Iran.

the numerous times in the past year that he reached out to Iran, including a YouTube video to the Iranian people; a letter from Mr. Obama to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; and even an offer to help Iran buy isotopes for a medical research reactor.

But the nonencounter in Munich between General Jones and Mr. Mottaki, like the full court press on Iran by Mrs. Clinton and other envoys to the region this week, shows that the administration is coming to terms with the limits of its engagement policy, many foreign policy experts say.

Obama has gotten to the end of himself and found there is a real world out there after all.