Berlin

The Munich Security Conference, a who’s who of global security officials and diplomats, has long been a platform to promote bizarre dialogues with the Iranian regime—and this year was no different. Its current head, former German ambassador to the United States Wolfgang Ischinger, seemed eager to capitulate to an Iranian nuclear weapon.

“I advocate that we develop a balanced policy of containment,” he told Die Welt in an interview in advance of the conference. Like many officials European and American officials who favor appeasement, Ischinger presumes that the Islamic Republic is a rational actor. Though Iran kills U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq, as well as murders civilians and Iranian dissidents across Europe and Argentina, some still think of the regime as they would any other state.