Sometime after the 1973 war, I remember seeing a cartoon that showed President Anwar el-Sadat lying flat on his back in a boxing ring. The Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, wearing boxing gloves, was standing over him, with Sadat saying to Meir something like, “I want the trophy, I want the prize money, I want the belt.”

I’ve been thinking of that cartoon a lot lately as I listen to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, lecturing the United States and its five great power partners on his terms for concluding a deal that would restrict Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon for 10 to 15 years in return for lifting sanctions. But in that draft deal Khamenei has managed to preserve Iran’s basic nuclear infrastructure, albeit curbed, and has continually insisted that Iran will not allow international inspections of military sites suspected of harboring covert nuclear programs.

It’s still not clear if the last remaining obstacles to a deal will be resolved. But it is stunning to me how well the Iranians, sitting alone on their side of the table, have played a weak hand against the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain on their side of the table. When the time comes, I’m hiring Ali Khamenei to sell my house.

You’d never know that “Iran is the one hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars due to sanctions, tens of billions because of fallen oil prices and billions sustaining the Assad regime in Syria,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment. And “it’s Ali Khamenei, not John Kerry, who presides over a population desperate to see sanctions relief.” Yet, for the past year every time there is a sticking point — like whether Iran should have to ship its enriched uranium out of the country or account for its previous nuclear bomb-making activities — it keeps feeling as if it’s always our side looking to accommodate Iran’s needs. I wish we had walked out just once. When you signal to the guy on the other side of the table that you’re not willing to either blow him up or blow him off — to get up and walk away — you reduce yourself to just an equal and get the best bad deal nonviolence can buy.