John McCain made some typically hard-line comments earlier today on Syria and Iran. I thought this was a particularly revealing statement:

And these talks, I believe, on the nuclear issue, we have already given away the store [bold mine-DL] by allowing them the right to enrich and not putting in check both the development of warheads and the means to deliver them. It is this misguided effort to somehow accommodate and get better relations with a country that is spreading disorder and unrest throughout the region — including Yemen, by the way — that is our enemy.

I call this a revealing statement because it expresses very clearly McCain’s total lack of interest in reaching a negotiated settlement with Iran on the nuclear issue (or on anything else). He portrays the extremely minimal and necessary “concession” to permit Iran a strictly limited ability to enrich uranium as having “given away the store,” which tells us that he can’t distinguish between effective and incompetent diplomacy. That’s not surprising, since he regards the entire effort to engage in diplomacy with “our enemy” as misguided, which implies that he wants the U.S. to do without one of its most important tools in conducting foreign policy whenever an “enemy” is involved. McCain and his allies bristle whenever someone portrays them as reflexively belligerent and uncompromising, but they demand maximalist, deal-breaking conditions for international agreements and then treat even the most minor compromises to reach a peaceful settlement as complete sell-outs to the “enemy,” with whom they think there should be no accommodation or agreement anyway. McCain and other Iran hard-liners want to see diplomacy with Iran fail for the simple reason that they reject any diplomatic engagement that doesn’t result in the total capitulation of the other party.