In the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton explains why hanging hopes on talks with Iran is not just a waste of time, but a dangerous and self-defeating endeavor. “Every day that goes by allows Iran to increase the threat it poses, and the viability of the military option steadily declines over time,” Bolton writes.

As attempts at diplomacy with Iran sputter and fail, the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment moves swimmingly from phase to phase. As does the regime’s effort to hide materials and further bury their nuclear facilities. Moreover, each day finds Tehran boosting its own military capabilities and those of Syria and Hezbollah, so that counterstrikes will be more effective. As Bolton explains, the success of a military strike on Iran becomes less probable and more risky with each spurned offer and ignored deadline.

No wonder Iran is bragging about new weapons and threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz. The mullahs are experiencing a surge of confidence beyond their most ambitious dreams. Pacifist Westerners are fond of saying, “talk until you’re blue in the face,” but they don’t understand that your skin tone isn’t the only thing that changes while diplomacy fails.

However the Bush administration is no longer up to the task of changing course. For those who are distraught over what Bolton describes as the “total intellectual collapse” of this presidency, I offer a quote that may shed some light on the present mindset at the White House. Here’s how former State Department aide Dennis Ross describes the George H.W. Bush administration in the wake of the first Gulf War:

You had a very small circle of people, both at the top and then in the immediate second tier in the Gulf War, who, from August [1990] until the end of the war, went through an unbelievably intense, emotional, physical, exhausting experience. There was tremendous anxiety, especially when the Pentagon was making some of the predictions about what the casualties would be. I saw how it weighed on the president. But it wasn’t just the president. It was all those who were working on this. . . We could not generate the interest at the top because, in a sense, they were spent.

If that’s how that administration felt after a swift and decisive victory, just imagine what it’s like trying to get this administration, post-Iraq, to act on Iran.