The Obama administration’s…naiveté…would be cute if it weren’t so dangerous.

Against the backdrop of an Institute for Science and International Security report acknowledging that Iran is within weeks, not months, of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb, and Israel’s repeat of their widespread statement that they cannot allow Iran to get nuclear weapons—Israel’s own existence depends on it—the Obama administration

is asking Congress to hold off on enacting new sanctions against Iran, arguing that a pause in the push to impose new penalties would give negotiators flexibility in talks now underway to get Iran to comply with demands it prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

No, that would simply play into Iran’s standard use of “negotiations” to stall and to gain time.  It’s a major contributor to the progress the Iranians already have made toward getting nuclear weapons.

More to the point, this request for retreat lessens our flexibility.  What this would do would be to leave us, after the talks have failed, in the position of threatening to increase sanctions if the Iranians don’t comply.  The much stronger position—and strength is the only place from which flexibility can come—is to be able to offer to ease sanctions, to offer to not take military action, on concrete evidence of actual compliance.

Iran has convinced the US to hold direct talks concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the administration put an optimistic face on the proceedings.  State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said this:

This is certainly…the first substantive step forward.  For the first time, we had…very detailed discussions.

There’s this, also:

Iran has hinted strongly in recent weeks that it is prepared to take significant steps in return for the US. and Europe rolling back expansive sanctions imposed on Tehran over the past decade.

Among these steps, said officials who have talked with Iranian diplomats, are a possible Iranian freeze on the production of near-weapons-grade fuel, which is uranium enriched to 20% purity.

Against this hope, though, we must place this:

The recognition of Israel as illegitimate is one of the principles of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, and even today the Islamic Republic believes Israel must be destroyed, a senior Iranian cleric close to the supreme leader said Saturday night.

Ayatollah Sayyid Ahmad Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts—the body that chooses the supreme leader—also condemned any effort for improved relations with America and warned that nothing is ruled out against the United States[.]

And

According to a source in the regime’s intelligence ministry—one who cannot be named for security purposes—the regime is unified in this new tactic of showing a moderate face in order to deceive the West into relieving some sanctions.