Marco Rubio talks to Josh Rogin about Iran:

Any agreement that allows them to retain any enrichment capability gives them exactly what they want. The only way they will abandon their nuclear program is if they are convinced that if they continue they will fail or it will bring the regime down.

It may come as a surprise to Rubio, but part of negotiating an agreement is allowing both parties to get something that they want. Telling the other party in a negotiation that it has give up its sine qua non position is the same as saying that you don’t want to reach an agreement. He has made his distaste for diplomacy clear over the last few months, and he does so again here. Rubio’s view is that the U.S. and the other major powers should dictate maximalist terms to Iran, Iran should accept them without qualification, and only then will it be allowed to get anything. He also seems to be laboring under the delusion that there is something that the U.S. or other states can do to compel Iran to abandon their nuclear program entirely. That’s a fantasy, and if the U.S. clung to such an unrealistic goal there would be no chance of resolving the nuclear issue through diplomacy.

It’s strange that Rubio rejects the “hawk” label as obsolete, when virtually every position he has taken since arriving in the Senate has aligned him with proponents of aggressive and confrontational policies. If Rubio’s positions can’t be described as hawkish, what does he think he should be called? Rubio makes an odd choice: “I view myself as a realist.” Presumably Rubio wouldn’t want to be associated with any other Republican realists of the last few decades, so choosing that label suggests that he wants to take hard-line policy views without the baggage of being labeled as a hard-liner.