Jeffrey Goldberg

This is just an assumption here, but I'm guessing that even those Republican members of Congress who forced the government to shut down believe in the importance of exporting American goods overseas. No congressional district is completely cut off from the global economy. I’m also guessing that congressional Republicans think that Asia is an important continent, or at least in the top six.

So it stands to reason that even the hardest of the hard core would think that it's necessary, from time to time, for the U.S. president to visit Asia to solidify relationships with the people with whom we do business.

OK, if it's Monday, it must be skunk-at-the-garden-party time.

There are two main reasons to doubt the possibility of an Iran-U.S. rapprochement, an idea that gained new life after Iran's charm offensive at the United Nations last week and a phone call between the presidents of the two countries on Sept. 27. The first is general to the Middle East, the second is specific to Iran.

So it seems that Iranian President Hassan Rohani, who has undertaken a charm offensive at the United Nations this week, can't bring himself to charm the one person he actually needs to charm, the man who has placed crippling sanctions on Iran's economy.

President Barack Obama was willing to shake hands with Rohani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly today, but the Iranian president wasn't ready for such a dramatic encounter -- even an unphotographed one.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani -- who this week is attempting to charm the pants off the United Nations, President Barack Obama, world Jewry and Charlie Rose -- may succeed in convincing many people that the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, doesn't actually want to gain control of a nuclear arsenal.

Why Rohani would assert this is obvious: The sanctions that the U.S. is imposing on Iran are doing real economic damage. A crippled economy threatens the interests of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and thus the regime's stability. We know that the regime isn't popular among many segments of the Iranian population -- witness the brutal crackdown on large-scale protests in 2009 -- and that it must make at least some of its citizens happy if it is to survive in the long term.

There is one main reason why Iran is making conciliatory noises about its relationship with the U.S. and about the future of its nuclear program, and there is one main reason why Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, is signaling his intention to give up his stockpiles of chemical weapons.

The reason: President Barack Obama's toughness.

Yes, I know. Toughness isn’t a quality lately ascribed to the president. But hear me out.

Last week, in reference to the decision by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to lobby on behalf of President Barack Obama's let's-attack-Syria-except-actually-not plan, I wrote that if I were the type to believe in conspiracy theories I'd be tempted to think that the president, who has had a difficult relationship with Aipac, was roping Washington's leading pro-Israel advocacy group into his unpopular campaign in order to diminish its reputation.

Mission accomplished, it would seem.

A couple of months ago, the Obama administration was -- at least rhetorically -- targeting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad for removal. Today, the U.S. has in a perverse way made Assad its partner.

The U.S. and Syria will now be working together on an improbable, even fantastical project: ridding a brutal country at war with itself of chemical weapons.

Two quick notes on two interested parties in the rolling Syria debacle.

First, what to make of Russia's intentions? I've been deeply skeptical, for the obvious reason that Russia is Russia, a weak country whose foreign policy revolves around sticking it to the U.S. The op-ed in the New York Times yesterday by Russian President and future "Crossfire" co-host Vladimir Putin is a case in point. In the op-ed, Putin went out of his way to agitate just about every American to the right of Noam Chomsky.

Rule No. 1 in the Middle East is this: The only thing you can count on is sudden and dramatic change.

Rule No. 2: The Middle East makes fools of optimists.

Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the U.S. might postpone a military strike on Syria if the regime put its chemical weapons under international supervision -- an offer that both Russia and Syria quickly warmed to.

So, in order to obviate an attack on a country that Americans evidently care about not at all, Vladimir Putin, the State Department's new Syria desk officer, working in concert with President Barack Obama and his intermittently slap-happy secretary of state, has come up with a fake solution to a real problem.