The chattering classes are chortling today about the latest supposed mistake by Mitt Romney in which he is being condemned for telling the truth about the corrupt and violent political and economic culture of the Palestinians. Meanwhile in Tunisia, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta committed the real gaffe of the week when he told a credulous traveling press corps that the administration’s effort to get Iran to abandon its drive for nuclear weapons was working even if it didn’t look like it. As the New York Times reports:

“These sanctions are having a serious impact in terms of the economy of Iran.” He added that “while the results of that may not seem obvious at the moment,” the Iranians had expressed a willingness to negotiate, and that they “continue to seem interested in trying to find a diplomatic solution.”

Translation: We know Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is right when he says the sanctions aren’t doing a thing to make the Iranians change their minds and the Iranians know that we know. But as long as Tehran is willing to pretend to negotiate, we will pretend along with them because our main goal is to prevent Israel from trying to actually do something about this deadly threat. And if this makes it clear that all we are trying to do is to kick the can down the road until after the presidential election when we might have more “flexibility” to do a deal with the Iranians, then don’t believe your lying ears and eyes.

Congress is still arguing about trying to close up the gaping loopholes in the sanctions that have been exacerbated by the administration’s promiscuous granting of waivers that have served to sustain the Iranian economy. Under these circumstances and with Iran showing no signs of buckling, the notion that economic pressure will be enough to resolve the problem is without foundation. Of course, it is “not obvious at the moment” that sanctions are working because it is more than obvious they are not.

As for the Iranians’ willingness to negotiate, it is difficult to understand how even a veteran politician like Panetta can say this with a straight face. Of course, they are willing to keep talking with the West. Iran has been negotiating for years because they know that as long as they do so they can continue making progress toward their nuclear goal.

As the collapse of the P5+1 talks this summer proved, and as every previous attempt at diplomacy and engagement conducted by both the Bush and Obama administrations proved, the only ones to profit from the talking are the Iranians. They have used the time won by such prevarications well as their nuclear centrifuges keep spinning and their stockpile of refined uranium grows. The time frame of their program is unclear, but whether it is one or two years away from actually having a bomb or sooner, the moment is quickly approaching when their efforts will be so far advanced it will be too late for force to be employed to stop them.

At Panetta’s next stop in Israel, he will tell the Israelis to trust that President Obama will do the right thing on Iran even though “it may not seem obvious at the moment” that he has any attention of acting. But instead of laughing at Romney for asking a reasonable question about the London Olympics and for refusing to lie about the morally bankrupt culture of the Palestinians, those who follow foreign policy should be alarmed at Panetta’s pathetic attempt to keep engaging with Iran when doing so only serves the interests of the Islamist regime and its nuclear ambitions.