The latest round of talks between the West and Iran in Lausanne, Switzerland broke up today with both sides saying differences still remain between the parties. Though the basic principles of the agreement allowing Iran to hold onto a vast nuclear infrastructure are already set, reportedly there are gaps between the sides on the amount of centrifuges it will keep as well as on the timing of the suspension of sanctions that have been imposed on the Islamist regime. The White House is claiming that President Obama is standing firm on his insistence that sanctions remain in place after the deal is signed. But if Iran is confident that he will eventually give in, it’s hard to blame them. The president has already made so many important concessions to Tehran and been willing to expend so much political capital in battles with both Congress and Israel that it’s hard to believe him when he says he will walk away from the negotiations if Iran doesn’t give in to his demands.

Talks will resume in Switzerland next week with what appears to be a still long list of differences to work out. But in spite of the president’s tough talk about not backing down, Iran knows that the administration has gone too far to give up. That’s been their strategy since the president opened up a secret talks with the regime in 2013. On point after point, the U.S. has abandoned the principles upon which the international coalition against Iran was formed and upon which President Obama campaigned for re-election in 2012.

In the interim deal signed in November 2013, the administration gave their tacit approval to an Iranian “right” to enrich uranium and started the process of loosening sanctions. That was supposed to be followed by a finite period of six months during which a subsequent agreement was to be negotiated. But that deadline has been extended three times since then as the Western powers became hostages to the process they had initiated. Having already discarded the impressive economic and military leverage it possessed over Iran, the P5+1 group felt it had no choice but to continue along the same path. Just as Secretary of State John Kerry defended the interim deal on the grounds that the minimal restrictions imposed and the concessions granted to Iran was better than no deal at all, so, too, have the current talks continued because the West was committed to a deal at all costs, no matter the terms.

In this way, the Iranians have wrung permission to keep thousands of centrifuges and a “sunset” clause that will eventually end restrictions on their nuclear program out of President Obama. Any such agreement will, at the very least, make Iran a threshold nuclear power, a development that rightly frightens moderate Arab nations as well as posing a potential existential threat to Israel.

The administration defends these concessions as being insignificant because the deal would make it impossible for Iran to “break out” to build a weapon in less than a year. Given the lack of inspections and the paucity of Western intelligence about Iran and the near certainty that there are nuclear facilities that aren’t currently under scrutiny such promises ring hollow. But even in the unlikely event that Iran keeps its promises the sunset clause ensures that they can eventually build a bomb even by following its terms.

That said, it is not too late for the United States to walk away from the negotiations if Iran refuses to agree that sanctions must be only gradually removed or abide by restrictions on their nuclear and military research (a point on which the lack of inspections has made it difficult to know just how much progress they’ve made in the past). But having stood their ground on every important facet of this negotiation up until now, why should the Iranians think the president will hold his ground on these points?

The president has already committed himself to signing a deal that will not be submitted to Congress but has already started talks at the United Nations to rescind international sanctions. He has publicly feuded with the prime minister of Israel and demanded that Democrats stay loyal to him rather than support bipartisan legislation calling for any agreement to be voted upon by Congress or for toughened sanctions to strengthen the administration’s hand in the talks. To give up now when he has gambled so heavily on what his staff has termed the ObamaCare of his second term, the notion that he would throw it all away now isn’t credible.

It should also be remembered that there is more here at stake for the president than the question of an Iranian bomb. The president has already committed himself to détente with Iran as his overall strategy for the Middle East. To back away from the talks and increase sanctions or even threaten force, as he has always claimed he would if a good deal couldn’t be obtained, would require him to rethink his approach to the conflict with ISIS where he has embraced Iran as a partner or to the civil war in Syria where the U.S. has acquiesced to the survival of Iran’s ally Bashar Assad. The nuclear deal is merely the excuse that he has used to justify an entente with Tehran that has been his goal all along.

So, as they have for the last two years, the Iranians are banking on the president’s zeal for a deal to allow them to get their way on these final points of disagreement. Since watering down the already desperately weak U.S. offer to Iran on the table isn’t going to be any less disgraceful than what he has already conceded, there’s really no reason for the administration to take a stand now. No matter how the White House and its media cheering section spin the outcome of the talks, no one should expect anything other than another Western surrender at Lausanne.