The head of the poorly-named Foundation for Defense of Democracies apparently thinks that Iran should build and test nuclear weapons:

“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be smart to follow Kim’s approach,” said Mark Dubowitz of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which generally supports Trump’s tough policies toward Iran. “The deal of the century could await him if he put aside decades of anti-Americanism and met Trump at a summit.”

If Iran’s leadership followed “Kim’s approach,” they would leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty, race to build as many nuclear weapons as possible, and develop long-range missiles to deliver them. Luckily, the Iranian government isn’t doing any of that and has no intention of doing those things, but that isn’t for lack of effort on the part of FDD and the Iran hawks in the administration to try to goad them into taking those actions. Iran hawks today are repeating the same mistakes that the Bush administration made with North Korea in the mid-2000s, and they are doing everything they can to give Iran an incentive to copy North Korea’s behavior over the last dozen years. They are working overtime to create a crisis over Iran’s nuclear program when the issue had already been successfully handled.

Encouraging Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is probably not really what Dubowitz meant to say, but like an Iran hawk he didn’t think this through very well. He probably just meant to feign interest in a diplomatic solution by using the empty photo-up summits with North Korea as a model. It’s not clear what would be served by having such a meeting between Trump and Khamenei. Trump’s actions up until now have already convinced Khamenei that there is use in holding any talks with the Trump administration. When Dubowitz makes this “proposal,” he already knows that the Iranian government has no desire to talk under present circumstances, and he knows that is because of the economic war that he and his colleagues have been calling for and supporting from the beginning. Like all other feints at diplomacy from this crowd, this suggestion of a meeting is not being made in good faith. They are only pretending to want to talk after they have made negotiations with the U.S. politically radioactive inside Iran.

In a different report, Dubowitz is quoted celebrating the duplicity of U.S. Iran policy:

“If you were a Martian who landed on the Washington Mall yesterday and you were given a briefing on Iran policy, you would think, wow, those Americans are really smart when they work together,” Mr. Dubowitz said. “The net result is that Iran is a lot worse off today in terms of nuclear infrastructure and worse off in its economic pain.”

The Martian would probably be busy trying to understand why the most powerful state in the world is obsessed with strangling a medium-sized country that poses no threat to it. If someone filled the Martian in on the details, he would probably be taken aback by just how treacherous and two-faced U.S. dealings with Iran over the last few years have been. I doubt the Martian would be impressed with how “smart” our government is when he realizes that the current administration reneged on a successful nonproliferation agreement for the sake of irrational hostility towards Iran and spite for the previous administration. He would probably be marveling that Dubowitz is boasting about how the U.S. went back on its word and betrayed Iran in one news outlet while feeding B.S. lines about wanting to negotiate to another, and the Martian would be confused about why reputable news outlets still cite an ideologue with such an obvious axe to grind.