Editor's Note: FMSO’s Operational Environment Watch provides translated selections and analysis from a diverse range of foreign articles and other media that analysts and expert contributors believe will give military and security experts an added dimension to their ...

Talks begin tomorrow between the P5 + 1 (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) and Iran. Today, the P5+1 group is having a prep meeting. Talks with Iran are destined to fail, not because I want them to, but because every piece is in place for failure:

Heads of state and foreign ministers from 50-plus countries will gather next week in Seoul, South Korea, to discuss the threat of nuclear terrorism, a follow-up to the first “nuclear-security summit” convened two years ago in Washington by President Obama.

Baghdad is all atwitter over the P-5+1 talks with Iran beginning today. A sandstorm kept many European and Western diplomats from landing, but the Iranians were out in full force, with Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili leading the way.

You know politicians are serious when they move from campaigning to governing. Something like that may be happening on the Republican campaign trail -- but, unfortunately, not at the Obama White House.

Despite having little demonstrable interest in giving up its nuclear weapons, North Korea is once again headed for a negotiating table to do just that. That the North Koreans have been invited at all is a testament to the strange desperation of both the Obama administration and the South Korean Lee Myung-bak administration to return to the Six Party Talks.