EDITORIAL: Ali Khamenei’s comments raise doubts about Iran deal

OPINION:

The devil is often in the details of a deal, but the devil lies in the West’s negotiators themselves as they attempt to make a deal with Iran. We have the word of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, on that. He launched such a fusillade of verbal rockets against the Obama administration that the newly signed “framework” for a deal is scorched and blackened. If there was doubt that Iran would act in good faith in talks to shut down its nuclear weapons program, there is none now.

The ayatollah, who holds the power in the Islamic republic, held nothing back last week in describing the deal to make a deal to an audience in Iran. U.S. negotiators have only “devilish” designs, he said, and are guilty of deception and lying. He sneered at two key elements of the framework deal, that economic sanctions would not disappear overnight but be phased out as Iranian behavior is closely monitored, and that nuclear work on military installations be open to inspection. No, no, no, he said. Iran had stipulated that sanctions must be lifted immediately when the pact is signed, that inspections be strictly limited. President Hassan Rouhani, who knows better than to disagree with the ayatollah, repeated the claim.

The State Department refrained from similar hyperbole and merely affirmed its description of the interim agreement. Iran’s dealmakers are not new to the diplomatic game, and such negotiating tactics are familiar to anyone who has bargained in the bazaars of the Middle East. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif upbraided Secretary of State John Kerry frequently during negotiations. His loud bellowing alarmed the bodyguards waiting in the corridor.

Rarely have a nation’s representatives acted with such harsh disrespect for negotiating partners. It’s obvious why. Eliminating sanctions at once, without preconditions, is essential for restarting Iran’s economic engine to generate the money to pay for its ambitions. Restricting inspections of its nuclear facilities is critical to continuing the program in secret, which the regime has done successfully in the past.

President Obama is desperate for a signature to wave before the cameras by the June 30 deadline. It’s naive in the extreme, it seems to us, to think Iran would honor any agreement signed now when it shows such fine contempt for the negotiators across the table. Bad behavior always tells something, and usually tells a lot. There’s a fine line between patient persistence and clueless obstinance. President Obama, who has trouble with red lines, has stepped over one himself this time.

Many members of Congress now doubt that a deal, with effective safeguards, is any longer possible. “As each new day reveals a new disagreement, it’s increasingly clear that Iran, in fact, failed to reach agreement with the United States and its partners on a political framework that addresses all parameters of a comprehensive agreement,” Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, a Republican, tells The New York Times. Tougher sanctions are the only effective way to force Iran to give up its quest for the bomb.

There’s no reason why Mr. Obama should think these negotiations could make a nuclear-free Iran possible. Whatever the ayatollah actually believes about the devil’s pitchforks, and whether Americans have horns, is irrelevant. It’s the ayatollah’s own vow to annihilate Israel and the West that is the stuff of devilry. A mad man with a nuclear bomb is a legitimate concern for the West and the world. Men who can’t recognize that are fools.