Like many of us, the Washington Post‘s editors are wondering when the Obama team is going to stop pining away for an unattainable grand bargain with the Iranian regime (which simply doesn’t want to be engaged) and get serious about sanctions. They review the president’s record of unsuccessful groveling and conclude:

The Iranian president is almost certainly not staking out a bargaining position. His stance is consistent with the regime’s behavior ever since its then-clandestine nuclear program was discovered in 2002 — and it has been reinforced by the coup that Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Khamenei have led this summer against the Islamic republic’s more moderate elements. Yet the Obama administration persists; the State Department’s spokesman said Thursday that “we will be testing [Iran’s] willingness to engage in the next few weeks.”

There’s no reason to publicly rule out talks. But the administration has said all along that it would seek tough sanctions against Iran unless it responded meaningfully to an offer of dialogue. The time has come for it to show whether it can deliver on that promise. Can Russia, which has been the focus of much diplomatic stroking during the past seven months, be persuaded to support measures such as a ban on arms or gasoline sales to Iran? Will European governments, which remain among Iran’s largest trading partners, finally curtail exports and investments?

Well, there actually is a reason to rule out talks: it would prevent the impression from forming that Obama is deluded about the Iranian regime’s intentions and lacks any bottom line. It would signal to the Congress and the “international community” that we are now serious about moving to the next stage. So long as the president dithers, extending deadlines and pretending we haven’t been rebuffed, he cements the Iranians’ conviction that we can be “played.”

After all, even with a brutal crackdown of its own people, the regime bought another eight months — maybe a full year — to develop its nuclear program with zero consequences. One suspects — and fears — that the mullahs’ confidence will only grow as they realize that a “deadline” isn’t anything to worry about while Obama is in the White House.