Drill this into your head: The Iranians want the bomb not because they are Muslims, but because they are Iranians. That's why the atomic symbol is on the currency. That's why the rhetoric is about national pride. This isn't about a global caliphate, but about a nation's arrival into the pantheon of powers. And America's recipe for a deterrence is insane. We're implacably opposed to Iran's nuclear ambitions, and rather than give them the root respect they want as we try and convince them to bargain away the security and symbolism of atomic weapons, we're demanding their total submission to our preferences before we even sit down for negotiations. We have set, as the precondition for their disarmament, their humiliation. This will not disarm them.
