According to our recently proposed treaty with the Iranian government, Iran keeps much of its nuclear program while agreeing to slow its path to weapons-grade enrichment. The Iranians also get crippling economic sanctions lifted. 

The agreement is not like détente-era arms reductions with the Soviets. After all, each superpower in the Cold War had enough nuclear missiles to reduce most of civilization to cinders. One mistake could have ended in Armageddon.

In this supposedly win-win deal, America does not have to worry about another costly and unpopular preemptive military action to stop proliferation. Iran keeps its nuclear program. It makes lots of money and can apparently maintain its ongoing support for global Islamic terrorism.

Unfortunately, such pacts of mutual advantage involving dictatorships do not have a good historical pedigree.

They were often proposed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, on the eve of, and during, World War II. In early 1939, Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin toyed with the idea of boxing in Nazi Germany by joining with democratic France and Britain....