LONDON --- As a deadline nears for a possible deal with Iran on its nuclear program, discussion is being clouded by false debate. A curtailment camp that sees a viable avenue to ring-fencing limited Iranian enrichment so that the country cannot acquire a bomb confronts a dismantlement camp that believes any deal is bad and every Iranian centrifuge must go.

The Obama administration officials leading the talks are committed curtailers. They seek a tough deal involving intensive verification over an extended period of a much-reduced enrichment program compatible only with civilian nuclear energy and assuring that Iran is kept at least one year from any potential “breakout” to bomb manufacture.

The dismantlers, who believe a deal would be disastrous, are led by Benjamin Netanyahu with strong support in the Republican-controlled Congress, even before the Israeli prime minister addresses a joint session early next month. Netanyahu, whose planned visit has angered Obama, argues that he has an “obligation to speak up on a matter that affects the very survival of my country.”

The falseness of the debate lies in the disingenuousness of the dismantlers. Iran has mastered the fuel cycle. This may be regrettable but is no less true for that. It did so before Obama took office. The country knows its way around basic enrichment technology. Thousands of centrifuges are spinning, although many fewer than would have been without the effective interim agreement concluded in late 2013. What then does it mean to dismantle knowledge? You can’t bomb a people’s knowledge out of existence. Yet this in essence is what the dismantlers propose.

In reality, the dismantlement camp favors escalation that makes a calamitous conflict with Iran more likely; it is a war camp. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, will not voluntarily eliminate a nuclear program that is a source of national pride and to which it believes it has a right.

Baloney, the dismantlers say, the country can be sanctioned to its knees . and Senators Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois, have a sanctions bill readied in an attempt to prove just that (Obama has said he will veto it). The sanction-and-dismantle devotees are deluded. Sanctions have hurt Iran, but the country is largely inured to them.

That leaves bombing Iran in an attempt to achieve dismantlement. Yet even optimistic assessments suggest the most a military campaign might achieve is setting the Iranian program back a couple of years. It would also lead the United States into a war with the sworn Shiite enemies of Sunni ISIS just as America and its allies do battle with the Islamic State, as well as place Israel at war with Persians and Arabs for the first time. As double whammies in folly go, this would be up there.

Wise counsel to the dismantlers would run as follows: “In a perfect world Iran would have no enrichment program, but life’s not perfect. This situation comes down to alternatives. Either you get a negotiated solution that ensures over some 15 years that Iran’s program is strictly limited, at least a year from breakout, with eyes and ears on the ground you’ve never had before, and the plutonium path to a bomb cut off by the transformation of the Arak research reactor . or you go for military action. And what would war achieve? It may set the program back some, but it will ensure that Iran goes for a bomb, inflame anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, and see the current international coalition for sanctions fall apart. That is not good for anyone, including Israel.”

A tough nuclear deal, of the kind sought by Obama, would enhance Israeli security. War with Iran would undermine it.

A little over a month remains until a March 24 deadline for at least the “political framework” of a deal. The main differences, I am told, are over an unrealistic Iranian demand that all sanctions be lifted at once if a deal is reached, and over cuts or modifications to the almost 10,000 operating centrifuges. Because Western officials believe Iran is prepared to send almost all its current stockpile to Russia, which would set back its “breakout” potential, there is more American flexibility on the number of centrifuges. Still, the number would probably need to be at least halved.

These are real but not insurmountable differences. Ushering Iran toward the world through a rigorous deal would have enormous political and economic benefits. As Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, said recently: “We need to seize this opportunity. It may not be repeated.” It remains to be seen if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme Iranian leader, is in “seizing” mode.

He’s not the only hard-liner. The dismantlers seek another unwinnable war. They cloak their intent with irresponsible talk of a deal as another Munich. Their argument is false. The curtailers are realistic. They are right. It’s far better to circumscribe enrichment than spur it . and possibly an Iranian bomb . through impossible dismantlement demands.