because there’s a certain breed of leftist (both here in the US and in Europe) who will actually swallow this line whole and take it as evidence that Iran is coming around and being reasonable.

These are the people who desperately need to spend some time reading history. Really. Not the “Oh, White European Males are responsible for all the evil that ever was” nonsense, but the real stuff. Bloody, painful, and ugly, history shows how this works out in reality.