WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Murky Secrecy Surrounding the Iran Nuke Deal.

There is absolutely no policy justification for these concessions being secret. The Iranians know what they are; so do all the governments involved in the negotiations. The only people these agreements are being hidden from is the public. And it seems unlikely that there is a need to hide the details from the Iranian public—the news that their negotiators got a better deal would presumably be good for the Iranian government’s political popularity.

So on the face of it, the secrecy clause looks like evidence of bad conscience and political squeamishness on the part of the U.S. government—the administration didn’t want the American people to know how many concessions it made to get the deal.

Question: If Obama affirmatively wanted the Iranians to get nuclear weapons, what would he have done differently?