Iran came out on top in a high-powered diplomatic simulation of the nuclear standoff held at Harvard late last year — an exercise that played out the conflict based on the real-life positions and inclinations of all the main players. Former National Security Council Iran expert Gary Sick, who led Team Iran in the exercise, wrote afterward that, for Washington, “the pursuit of sanctions in this game, as in the real world, became an end in itself, with little impact on Iran or its ability to continue [uranium] enrichment.” And that appears to be a fair assessment of the Obama Administration’s current Iran efforts.

U.S. diplomats are hard at work this week trying to persuade reluctant partners to back new Iran sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. Having last week told the Senate that the U.S. could get a new sanctions resolution through the Security Council in the next 30 to 60 days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday allowed that such a resolution would more likely come “sometime in the next several months.” Clinton was in Brazil Wednesday, hoping to enlist the support of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for new sanctions. But Lula warned ahead of the meeting that “it is not prudent to push Iran against a wall” and urged dialogue with Iran as the basis of finding a solution. And his Foreign Minister warned after the talks that new sanctions “could be counterproductive.”