This week's 'What Not to Read' comes from The Daily Beast's Reihan Salam. Salam's articles are normally a blizzard of ersatz contrarianism (see "How Glenn Beck Saves Lives;" it's even worse then it sounds), but his recent article on Obama's Iran strategy takes the cake.

What make Salam's piece so galling is not his criticism of Obama--which is remarkably petty--but his ridiculous prescription for the current administration:

"Whether he likes it or not, his engagement strategy with Iran has been revealed as a hollow hope, one that rested on an overoptimistic interpretation of Iranian intentions. As former Bush foreign-policy adviser Peter Feaver has explained, Iran is far more likely to negotiate from a position of weakness than of strength. Rather than reassure the Iranians with a wink and a nod that we’re ready to do business, President Obama should be building an international coalition to isolate a recalcitrant Iran as thoroughly as the the West once isolated apartheid-era South Africa."

In the current geopolitical environment, this strategy will work as well as it has over the past 30 years, which is to say not at all. As long as Iran remains one of China's top crude oil suppliers and Russia continues to use Iran as a counterbalance to the expansion of Western influence, the international coalition Salam hopes Obama can build will remain a myth.

-Evan