Now it seems there might not be an Iran deal after all. The Wall Street Journal reports: “International powers negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran failed to meet another deadline on Tuesday, the second missed target in a week, raising the prospect of an open-ended diplomatic process over an issue on which President Barack Obama has staked his foreign-policy record. . . . [W]ith negotiations making little headway, the White House on Tuesday laid the groundwork for . . . continuing talks while keeping in place a November 2013 interim agreement that provided Iran with limited sanctions relief in exchange for rolling back parts of its nuclear program.”
Mark Dubowitz observes, “If the Obama administration can’t get a deal by the July 9th deadline, they may extend over the summer to try and get a deal after September 7th, in which case the congressional review period drops back to thirty days.” It is not yet clear a deal won’t be made, but it is easy to see why it is proving so difficult. Once we started doling out concession after concession, Iran learned there is no bottom line for the Americans, so it pursues new demands (e.g. lifting embargo on conventional weapons). Its negotiators may stop at some point, collect their chips and leave the table happy with an entirely one-sided deal, or Iran may perceive there is no upside to making a deal at all. Humiliating the U.S. president and persistent cheating on the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) may suit Iran’s present needs.
There are two ways of looking at the extended negotiations. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) took to the Senate floor to blast the administration, saying, “This extension is yet another folly, but the President and the Secretary of State act as if it is cost-free.” He argues that we have taught Iran “a very dangerous lesson,” namely that it can continue violating the JPOA and adding new terms. He wants the administration to leave the table, add its own new demand — free the four American hostages — and reimpose sanctions.
An alternative view seems to be that the only thing worse than never-ending talks would be a final deal brokered by incompetent U.S. negotiators Secretary of State John Kerry and chief negotiator Wendy Sherman. This is the “do no harm” school of thought, reasoning that if the president does not saddle the West with an awful deal, the new president in 2017 can start from scratch. Moreover, Congress may finally choose to move to extend the existing Iran sanctions bill (due to expire in 2016) and bring to the floor the 2015 Kirk-Menendez bill (which 12 Democrats promised to vote on after March 30). Whether or not President Obama vetoes it, that would be a strong signal that his position is not the permanent position of the United States.
Perhaps the administration might be getting an inkling that the deal it has in mind can’t be sold to the Congress and public. The Daily Beast reports, “A nuclear agreement with Iran could give Tehran a $100 billion financial windfall—a sum that even the Obama administration is concerned could be used to finance terrorism against American interests.” No! You wonder when exactly the administration figured this out.
Now all of this may be moot, and a deal could come at any moment. But for now, there is the possibility — the hope, critics of the deal would say — that Obama will not find a way to give away the store to Iran. That “failure” would be the most positive foreign policy accomplishment of his presidency.
 
The Washington Post, 8 July 2015
By Jennifer Rubin

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported