Eli Lake reports today that the Obama and Netanyahu governments are creating a “working group” to “assess the progress of President Obama’s outreach to Iran.” Sounds like one of those things that could be either completely irrelevant, or a useful channel of communication. Time will tell.

But the working group appears set to serve another purpose. It could become an excuse for Iranian recalcitrance.

Flynt Leverett, a former Mideast specialist on the National Security Council and advocate of a “grand bargain” between the U.S. and Iran, said the new working group could undermine the credibility of any U.S. offers to Iran. So far, the Obama administration has not offered new proposals, but has lifted the Bush administration’s precondition that Iran suspend uranium enrichment before U.S. diplomats would talk directly with Tehran.

“It is an idea that unfortunately is in keeping with a number of other statements and decisions by the Obama administration that will completely undercut the credibility of any U.S. overtures in the eyes of Iranian leaders – assuming the U.S. will make such overtures,” he said. “The Iranians are going to see this as Israel setting policy toward them.”

Keep this quote in mind when Obama’s engagement fails. Leverett and his cohorts are skilled purveyors of the claim that diplomatic failure arises because our side didn’t get it quite right — “it” being (take your pick) our choice of words, our timing, our level of representation, the incentives and payoffs we offered, what kind of coffee we served at a meeting, what tie someone wore during negotiations, etc.

Of course, Leverett’s objection to the working group cannot be reconciled with the failure over the past eight years of the EU-3, the IAEA, the UN Security Council, and the P5+1 to get anywhere with Iran, and none of those negotiations were adulterated by sinister Zionist meddling. In Leverett’s world, the Iranians, practitioners of an ancient and sophisticated culture of negotiation and brinkmanship, are little more than emotionally unstable children whose sensibilities must be delicately appeased. This is diplomacy as pop-psychology, and it serves the vital task of fabricating a narrative in which our side is to blame for Iran’s belligerence. Now Leverett has his excuse.