Hope in one hand, and accumulate nuclear material in the other...

...and let's see which one fills up first.

Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers:  The Audacity of Weakness

VDH has some interesting things to say about the weakness of Obama's foreign policy, and how consequences like Putin's land grab and the emergence of ISIS came about.

And currently there is a great deal of brouhaha about the Republicans' rather ham-handed attempts to undermine Obama's "diplomacy" initiatives.  (For the record, the Logan Act doesn't seem to apply to the Netanyahu speech, as it doesn't amount to a "negotiation.")  I'm not pleased with how they've handled this, but on the upside, Bibi's appearance has elevated the issue to the public awareness in a way that the left-leaning media never have:  by pointing out the essential dichotomy of views here, by making it clear that there are alternatives to simply permitting Iran to go forward with nuclear production.

The most important objection that could be offered by Obama supporters in defense of an Iran nuclear deal--and one that I've yet to encounter, by the way--is that weapons-grade fissile material and reactor-grade material are not the same thing, that enriching plutonium (or uranium, for that matter) to weapons grade is altogether more expensive and time-consuming than simply making reactor fuel. Although so far unstated, this position would seem to be the rationale for allowing Iran to go forward with a nuclear power program, since careful monitoring of their enrichment would be able to determine whether Iran were reneging on the deal.

This assumes a great deal of regulatory oversight on our part, which would be contingent upon maintaining some kind of relations with Iran. History has shown that this isn't something we could count on, and that any personnel we have on the ground there would be at risk, all the time.

But a deeper risk, in my opinion, is that Iran would simply stick to the enrichment program and generate nothing but reactor fuel, thereby lulling the West into a false sense of security.

Iran has sponsored terrorism in the past. We know this.

A dirty bomb is the holy grail of terrorists. We also know this.

You don't need weapons-grade plutonium to make a dirty bomb. All you need is radioactive material..such as the spent fuel from a reactor.

Iran's government might be legitimately concerned with building power plants.

That doesn't mean they don't, or in the future won't, have ulterior motives.