Negotiations Savings Time

As everyone sacrificed an hour of sleep for some daylight this weekend, David Ignatius' op-ed in the Washington Post raised an interesting "two clocks" dilemma facing the Obama administration on Iran.  On the one clock, they want to be sure that negotiations are well planned, genuine, careful, and do not have arbitrary time limits attached.  On the other clock, the Iranians continue to produce LEU each day and so there is an incentive to get the talks moving or shift the goalposts for the conditions or outcomes of the negotiations.  Israel's military intelligence chief went so far as to say Iran is intentionally using the prospect of negotiations to by more time and that

Iran has crossed the technological threshold. Reaching a military-grade nuclear capability is a question of synchronising its strategy with the production of a nuclear bomb

The U.S. must work to develop a comprehensive strategy that it can begin to put in place so that it can get the ball rolling while also reassuring Israel so they do not consider unilateral military action.  One possible interim measure to help soothe Israel fears a bit could be to convince the Russians to scrap their potential S-300 sales to Iran as part of a larger missile defense negotiation. **Update: Richard Weitz published a piece today about the role of the S-300 in Russian Arms Sales to Iran**