here to discuss this is columnist for foreign policy.com, james traub. sir, make sense out of this.'s going on in iran a sign we're winning or losing? >> you know, one of the underappreciated dmefntions of diplomacy is time. i think the obama strategy has always been we don't have a good solution. it is really terrible but time may be on our side. they've been abused for that by romney and others. you're vacillating you're being too soft and so forth. there was no hard, easy, fast solution so the solution has been let's force iran into a position where we'll be negotiating a way things otherwise would not do. it is not -- it's not clear that we're there yet. i think it is arguable we're getting there. >> eliot: let me take the other side for a moment. the more time they have, the greater the likelihood they actually develop nuclear weapons. the timeframe for that, of course is so elastic. you see one c.i.a. report, one leaked report. is it six months, a year, as they move toward some line in the sand. house those two collide? we impose sanctions. it takes time for the economic impac