One of many startling statements in President’s Obama interview with Tom Friedman is his assertion that he’s seeking “to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.”

Even granting that this is an opportunity, why is it a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity? By his own account, it’s not. There is, he claims, a basic structural and strategic case for the deal on both sides. It’s a case that would presumably hold two or five or ten years from now, and for that matter it’s one that presumably held two or five or ten years ago.