Born in 1918 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, David Katz took the last name Karr and pursued a career in journalism, while moving in Communist circles and occasionally providing information to the FBI. During World War II he worked for the Office of War Information, but was fired after being hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His postwar successes reportedly made him the model for the main character in the bestselling novel How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. And his story gets even stranger thereafter, as Fred Siegel writes in his review of the new biography of Karr by the historian Harvey Klehr:

In the 1950s, . . . Karr became, for a time, a capitalist. In the 1960s, as he was moving though his third wife, he took up residence in Hollywood and became, for the first time, a passionate supporter of Israel. Come the 1970s as he moved toward his fourth marriage, this time to a wealthy and cultured Jewish French woman—he already had five children—Karr settled in Paris and signed on with the KGB while continuing to work as an international businessman.

It was an extraordinary journey for a guy from Brooklyn who had just barely finished high school. . . . Parlaying his work as a corporate-relations man into a job as CEO of Fairbanks Whitney, a leading defense contractor, Karr relied on a certain brashness . . . in his command of the corporate battlefield. Karr is perhaps best compared with Sammy Glick, protagonist of the novel What Makes Sammy Run and an archetype of the striving and sometimes scheming second generation of East European Jews driven to make it out of the tenements and to the top of American society at all costs.

In 1973 Karr appears to have been recruited by the KGB. This time around, though, he appears to have been motivated less by the ideological commitments of his youth than by money. Between 1973 and his death in 1979, Karr, sometimes working with American business tycoon Armand Hammer, sometimes trying to undercut Hammer, served as an intermediary for American companies looking to win a foothold in Russia.

Karr’s death, subject still to much speculation, remains a mystery.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.