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Listening to the spin out of Washington last week, you'd think that fear of imminent sanctions prompted Iran's arrival at nuclear talks in Geneva on Thursday and forced it to promise to change its wicked ways. Tehran's negotiators agreed to inspections at its hitherto secret uranium enrichment plan at Qom and accepted a plan to ship three quarters of its existing enriched uranium stock to Russia for eventual reprocessing into fuel rods for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Still, the official line warns, Iran's promises of good behaviour can't be banked: it will have to prove its good intentions through action.

Many in Washington also began talking as if it were conventional wisdom that Iran continues to hide more sinister activity from view. Indeed, The New York Times has...