The latest round of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and its Western partners and Iran ended today in Geneva without agreement. But it’s clear that the Obama administration is hoping that its latest concessions will entice Iran to finally sign a document in the coming weeks that could somehow be interpreted as a foreign-policy victory for a president badly in need of one. To support this notion of an impending deal, a “senior administration official” briefed the press on the outlines of the latest proposal delivered to the Iranians. But while it seems like something Tehran ought to pounce on if it really wants to “get right with the world,” in the president’s words, the details tell us more about the administration’s desperation than about progress toward an accord that would conclusively end the Iranian nuclear threat. After several previous Western retreats that had gradually ensured that Iran could keep its nuclear infrastructure, the latest concession in the form of a phased program will eventually grant the Islamist regime the freedom to do anything it wants.

The proposed terms leaked by the U.S. represent a shocking demarche from the president’s 2012 promise that any deal would mean Iran would have to give up its nuclear program. As the Associated Press reports:

The United States and Iran are working on a two-phase deal that clamps down on Tehran’s nuclear program for at least a decade before providing it leeway over the remainder of the agreement to slowly ramp up activities that could be used to make weapons. …

The U.S. initially sought restrictions lasting for up to 20 years; Iran had pushed for less than a decade. The prospective deal appears to be somewhere in the middle. One variation being discussed would place at least 10-year regime of strict controls on Iran’s uranium enrichment program. If Iran complies, the restrictions would be gradually lifted over the last five years of such an agreement.

Iran could be allowed to operate significantly more centrifuges than the U.S. administration first demanded, though at lower capacity than they currently run. Several officials spoke of 6,500 centrifuges as a potential point of compromise, with the U.S. trying to restrict them to Iran’s mainstay IR-1 model instead of more advanced machines.

While in theory this could mean that Iran would be prevented from building a bomb during the next decade, it more or less puts in place a Western acquiescence to future plans for a bomb.

But there are two clear problems with this idea.

One is that like past concessions giving Iran the right to enrich uranium, albeit at low levels and then the one authorizing the regime to hold onto thousands of centrifuges and the option to keep its nuclear stockpile in a non-active state, this latest retreat isn’t the last one Iran will expect the West to make on its way to an agreement. The dynamic of the negotiations that President Obama has authorized is clear. Whenever Iran says no to a Western demand, the U.S. simply says OK and gives in. At this stage, and with no sign that the Americans will ever walk away from talks that have already been extended three times, the Iranians clearly think they can keep negotiating indefinitely until the U.S. eventually agrees to a deal that would give Iran everything it wants, seriously endangering the security of the West but also that of Israel and moderate Arab nations.

The second problem is that, as last week’s report from the International Atomic Energy Agency stated, Iran is still stonewalling the UN body’s efforts to discover the facts about their progress toward weaponization of their nuclear research. The West simply has no idea how close the Iranians have gotten to a bomb. They also have no idea how much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is unknown to them. While Israeli and Western intelligence have openly speculated about the likelihood that much of the country’s nuclear work is being conducted at secret facilities, without a rigorous inspection regime that would give the IAEA access there is not a ghost of a chance that any regulation scheme could possibly work to restrain Iran, no matter how many carrots President Obama is offering his Islamist negotiating partners.

Under these circumstances, it’s understandable that the Israeli government is upset. While the administration is intent on using the nuclear talks as a wedge by which it can create a new détente with Iran that will ensure cooperation on a host of issues such as the fight against ISIS, in practice what it is doing is acquiescing to Tehran’s push for regional hegemony. Even in the unlikely event that Iran observes the proposed agreement, giving it this much capacity will make it a threshold nuclear power and a clear threat to the future of Israel (which it again threatened with destruction last week) as well as moderate Arab regimes.

Though the president’s apologists will, as they have with past concessions, defend this proposal as the best deal that can be made, Washington’s zeal for a deal is again the undoing of Western resolve. Kicking the can down the road for ten years may make sense to a president that has less than two more years in office. But the security of the West and its allies must be viewed with a longer perspective.

Yet what has to be most frustrating for observers who care about stopping the Iranian nuclear threat is the willingness of the administration to publicize concessions in such a way as to make them the starting point for future talks. With this ten-year pledge in their pocket, you can bet the next round of negotiations will begin with Iranian demands to lower the amount of time they will have to operate under restrictions. At this rate by 2016, Obama will have given away any shred of a deterrent to Iranian cheating or its future nuclear ambitions.

Though the administration thinks this leak will bolster its position, members of Congress who take this issue seriously should regard it as an even greater incentive for them to pass more sanctions on Iran that will attempt to restrain the desire of this president to accept any deal, even a disastrous one, rather than ever admit that his outreach to a tyrannical, anti-Semitic, terror-sponsoring Iranian regime has failed.