So the Swiss talks have collapsed. Quelle surprise. The latest round of negotiations between Western powers and Iran, held in a luxury resort overlooking Lake Geneva, has ended without a breakthrough.
Enter MI5 with a stark warning: the nuclear deadline is imminent, and Iran is only months away from a weapon. Anyone with a passing familiarity with history saw this coming. The pattern is now tediously predictable.
We hold ornate talks in pleasant venues, full of fine wine and softer promises. The Iranians stall, enrich more uranium, and the clock ticks ever closer to midnight. And yet the chattering classes insist that this time, somehow, diplomacy will succeed.
It will not. We are reliving the late 1930s with a Persian accent, the same fatal combination of wishful thinking and strategic paralysis. The Victorians would have understood the rhythm.
They knew that when a rival power approaches a threshold of existential capability, you do not offer them another round of pleasantries. You offer them a stark choice. The collapse of the Vance talks is not a failure of diplomacy.
It is the inevitable result of a decade of feckless engagement. We have traded airy declarations for concrete action. We have preferred the comfort of the negotiating table to the discomfort of hard decisions.
The MI5 warning is not a surprise. It is a final, desperate signal that the era of soft power has ended. The only question left is whether we shall respond with a velvet glove or an iron fist.
My bet is on the glove, followed by more outrage and more hand-wringing. But history will not be kind to those who chose decorum over deterrence.
