How to handle Iran

A deadline has come and gone in the seven-nation negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but that doesn’t mean the talks are over. Wednesday in Vienna, the site of the still-ongoing negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the group had decided to extend the current agreement between Iran and Western nations until June 30, 2015, while they work on the next steps.

For a year now, talks with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany on one side of the table and Iran on the other have proceeded with one agreement in place: Iran halts its nuclear program, and the West ladles out $700 million a month in Iranian assets frozen by economic sanctions.

Skeptical members of Congress suggested Tehran is stalling to keep pocketing the money that would continue to flow under the seven-month extension of talks. They have also hinted that the next Congress, which will have a Republican majority, could vote to reinstate harsh sanctions against Iran.

At the White House on Monday, presidential spokesman Josh Earnest stressed Washington’s contention that the world is safer with Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons paused, while Secretary of State John Kerry weighed in from the Vienna negotiations.

“Hopefully, when properly briefed and when we’ve had a chance to report to them … they will come to see the wisdom of leaving us the equilibrium for a few months to be able to proceed without sending messages that might be misinterpreted,” Kerry said.

But columnist Cal Thomas said Iran has Kerry and his Western counterparts right where it wants them.

“They’re stringing us along and are pretending that they’re serious about actually suspending their pursuit of nuclear weapons while at the same time denying that they’re pursuing nuclear weapons, saying that nuclear power is only to power light bulbs and other things that use electricity in Iran,” Thomas said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not believe the negotiations will produce anything useful for the West. But extending the deadline for negotiations, at this point, would be better than pushing through a bad deal. But that doesn’t change Iran’s endgame, Thomas said: “They still call [the United States] the Great Satan. And if somebody says they’re going to kill you, and prove it by a record of murder of other people, then you’d better take them seriously. And we’re not.”

Thomas said he does not count on new sanctions passed by the next Republican Congress to help things because the GOP does not have enough votes to override a veto by President Barack Obama.

“This is a declared religious war, declared by them, ‘them’ being the Islamic extremists who are running Iran,” Thomas said. “If we don’t face up to that and respond accordingly, and stop thinking that any promise made by the Iranians is going to be fulfilled, we’re playing right into their hands, sanctions or not.”

Listen to Nick Eicher and Cal Thomas discuss American foreign policy toward Iran on The World and Everything in It: