Someone ought to tell the Supreme Leader that this scam stopped working once Obama was out of office. 

Breaking a weapons agreement you never meant to keep and then trying to take it hostage isn’t even original to Iran. The Russians kept pulling this same routine until Reagan and then Trump (yes, Trump, Obama was happy to ignore Russian treaty violations) slapped them across the face. The Norks have been at this in multiple administrations. So Iran is unfashionably late to the treaty scam party.

Iran said on Monday it could quit the global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if European countries refer it to the U.N. Security Council over a nuclear agreement, a move that would overturn diplomacy in its confrontation with the West.

The 1968 NPT has been the foundation of global nuclear arms control since the Cold War, including a 2015 deal Iran signed with world powers that offered it access to global trade in return for accepting curbs to its atomic program.

Britain, France and Germany declared Iran in violation of the 2015 pact last week and have launched a dispute mechanism that could eventually see the matter referred back to the Security Council and the reimposition of U.N. sanctions.

“If you call us out for violating the pact, we’ll pull out of the pact we’re not keeping anyway.”

1. International arms control treaties have been good for only one thing, and that’s shutting down weapons development by free nations while giving the bad guys a free hand. That’s exactly what they were designed to do. Especially back in the Cold War.

2. Iran is trying to have its yellowcake and eat it too. It wants to use agreements as leverage while violating them and then threatening to violate them some more when it gets called out for it.

Dump the agreements. They’re worthless anyway.

Any nation in the 21st century whose nuclear program we have good reason to be worried about won’t be restrained by agreements anyway.