WAPO EDITORIAL – SANE AGAIN – AT 8:18 A.M. ET:  We've said here often that the Washington Post has the best liberal editorial page in the country, especially on foreign policy.  It demonstrates that there are sane, thoughtful liberals of the old, national-defense school, that they're not all Obamanuts.  Now the Post, in a great editorial, demands that the administration stand firm on Iran.  

The Obama administration has a history of responding to Iran’s stonewalling by peeling away its own demands. It gave up an attempt to impose a permanent ban on Iranian enrichment and seems to have dropped a requirement that an underground uranium enrichment plant be closed. Now it seems to be contemplating scenarios under which Iran would not have to dismantle centrifuges that would be the center of any bomb-making effort.

In theory, a nuclear deal including this concession could still achieve the goal publicly set by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, which is to increase the time Iran would need to produce a bomb to six months to one year. However, by leaving the nuclear infrastructure intact, it would cede Iran the option of racing to build a nuclear arsenal at a time of its choosing, while removing the sanctions that are pressing the regime. Meanwhile, a concession already made by the United States and its allies — setting a date after which all restrictions on Iran’s nuclear work would lapse — would create a time bomb for the Middle East. Neighbors such as Saudi Arabia would likely take such a date, whether it is five or 15 years away, as a deadline for creating their own capacity for building nuclear weapons.

We have supported negotiations with Iran, and the interim deal struck last year, as preferable to what had previously looked like a slide toward war. But President Obama should resist the temptation to make further concessions in order to complete a long-term deal by November. In the absence of a dramatic change in its positions, Iran should be offered, at best, an extension of the existing arrangement, with the current sanctions left in place — and threatened with tougher measures if it does not accept.

COMMENT:  Sound thinking.  Don't expect the same from The New York Times, whose editorial writers work in a sandbox. 

October 3, 2014