Dramatists thrive on impossible choices; presidents are paid to avoid them. Ever since he took office, President Barack Obama has striven to escape what his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, once called a “catastrophic alternative”: namely, the stark decision over whether to bomb Iran, or to accept an Iran with the Bomb.As Mr Obama prepares to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in the White House today, he will know that, for once, the French leader was innocent of Gallic exaggeration when he framed the looming dilemma in those terms as long ago as 2007.
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