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Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, European and Saudi policy towards Iranian nuclear weapons development has been straightforward: fatalism. For countries who would be directly threatened if Iran gets its bomb, this is baffling. Europe and Saudi Arabia have enormous leverage over Iran in the form of trade and energy investment sanctions. Their failure so far to use it has divided what should be a natural alliance to moderate the Iranian regime.

Instead, Europe prefers to talk. This would be fine if Iran were negotiating in good faith, but as we discovered at the weekend, this is not the case. As things stand so far, by indulging Europe's love of talk, Iran has met its apparent objective, which is to buy time to develop nuclear weapons. Alarmingly, despite the...