Sometime after the 1973 war, I remember seeing a cartoon that showed President Anwar el-Sadat lying flat on his back in a boxing ring. The Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, wearing boxing gloves, was standing over him, with Sadat saying to Meir something like, “I want the trophy, I want the prize money, I want the belt.”
I’ve been thinking of that cartoon a lot lately as I listen to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lecturing the United States and its five great power partners on his terms for concluding a deal that would restrict Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon for 10 to 15 years in return for lifting sanctions. But in that draft deal Khamenei has managed to preserve Iran’s basic nuclear infrastructure, albeit curbed, and has continually insisted that Iran will not allow international inspections of military sites suspected of harboring covert nuclear programs.
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