The U.S. has begun indirect talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and the question is whether this will be one more run-around to a bad deal. That’s the way it has worked for more than two decades, and it will be the goal of the regime again. The question is whether President Trump settles for it.

Iran so far has been the best of his second-term foreign-policy initiatives. He is restoring the “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign from his first term, which will shrink the regime’s income.

Mr. Trump has also laid down a tough marker that Iran must dismantle its nuclear program, a la Libya in 2003, if it wants to avoid a military attack. “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” the President said recently. “It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”

An ostentatious lineup of B-2 bombers in Diego Garcia spotted by civilian satellites drove home the warning. This is the opposite of the Obama-Biden appeasement strategy that yielded more Iranian nuclear progress and Iran-backed proxy wars across the Middle East.

Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s de facto Secretary of State, is his lead negotiator on Iran and suggested a more modest U.S. goal ahead of weekend talks. “I think our position begins with dismantlement of your program. That is our position today,” Mr. Witkoff told the Journal. “That doesn’t mean, by the way, that at the margin we’re not going to find other ways to find compromise between the two countries.”

He added that “where our red line will be, there can’t be weaponization of your nuclear capability.”

Iran will insist it is already meeting that “weaponization” standard because it hasn’t built a bomb. If that’s where talks end up, it won’t be much better than Barack Obama’s 2015 deal. In that deal Iran retained its uranium enrichment capacity, refused inspections to key nuclear sites, and expanded its ballistic missile program.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s goal will be to get the same deal. That’s why foreign-supervised dismantlement and intrusive, on-demand inspections are essential. John Kerry, who negotiated the 2015 deal, argues nearby that a far better deal is possible because Iran’s regional position is so much weaker. If even he thinks so, Mr. Trump would be widely criticized if he settled for less.

Israel is also a player here, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out his position after meeting Mr. Trump in Washington. “We agree that Iran will not have nuclear weapons. This can be done in an agreement, but only if this agreement is a Libya-style agreement; that they go in, blow up the facilities, dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision and American execution—that’s good.”

“A second option, that it won’t happen. They’ll just drag out the talks, and then the option is military. Everyone understands that. We discussed that at length,” he said.

A dismantlement deal is preferable to an attack on Iran that would have uncertain consequences, but the military destruction of most of Iran’s program is better than a deal that leaves Iran able to build a bomb after it has had time to rebuild its military strength and proxy network. That’s the test for Mr. Witkoff and the President.

The Wall Street Journal