Having apparently learned nothing from 10 years of futile negotiations with Iran, President Obama seemed perilously close late last month to yet another deal purportedly making “progress” eliminating the ayatollahs’ nuclear weapons program.

Fortunately, however, the recently concluded Baghdad talks between Iran and the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany (P-5+1) produced no substantive agreement. Nonetheless, we are assured that the meetings were successful. Why? The parties will hold a third meeting in this latest series this month, in Moscow of all places. Perhaps the fourth will be in Tehran.

Once again, we have fallen into Iran’s well-oiled trap of endless negotiations. While no harmful agreement emerged from Baghdad, “could have been worse” is not an acceptable outcome in the existential struggle against nuclear proliferation. By securing four more weeks, Iran won this round on points. It gained more precious time, as it has over the past decade, to expand its impressive nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile infrastructure.