As night follows day . . .

 . . . so does patty-cake with our mortal enemy reach another impasse:

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. The talks between Iran and the P5+1 group over Tehran’s attempts to create nuclear weapons have stalled again as the Iranian negotiators escalated their demands for sanctions relief. Instead of phasing out sanctions — after several large concessions on economic pressure just to get Iran to the table — the Iranians now demand an end to sanctions at the front end of the deal.

The West has balked at the demand. For now, at least:

The U.S. and its European allies are demanding the U.N.’s sanctions be suspended or terminated in a phased time-frame over years.

They believe sanctions relief should only come after Iran addresses concerns about its past nuclear work and is given a clean bill of health by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Iranians “say it’s a deal breaker. They don’t want it at all,” said a senior European diplomat involved in the Lausanne talks, referring to Iran’s position on the U.N. sanctions. “There’s no way that we would give up on that…. No way.”

The official said it would take much more than a year or two for U.N. sanctions to be lifted.

“If you’re talking about the IAEA certifying that the Iranian program is clean, I think it will take years by any measure,” the European official said. U.S. officials on Thursday voiced the same position.

Welcome to Iranian Negotiations 101. This has been going on for more than a decade, and the only people who don’t grasp what Iran is doing are in the White House. Iran pretends to negotiate for a while, and then finds reasons to stall talks and blame the West for the impasse. Then, while the West spends several months trying to find incentives to restart the process all over again, Iran has time to continue its progress on developing nuclear weapons.

Memo to Secretary Global-Test: Give it up, pal.  You ain't gonna get any legacy as a visionary statesman ushering in a grand new age of unicorns, rainbows, tofu and sprouts.  Quit wasting my tax dollars and putting Western civilization in mortal peril.