“A United States trade embargo is not a foreign-policy weapon to be casually employed. Whether or not it has a crippling effect on the target country, an embargo is a powerful symbol of Washington’s ire, and should be used only against countries that threaten American security and principles. Iran fits that definition.”

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That is the language with which the New York Times began its editorial, “The Iran Embargo,” issued on May 2, 1995. It went on to say that President Clinton “made the right call when he followed his foreign policy advisers rather than economic advisers and imposed a complete ban on trade and investment with Teheran.” The Times observed that Mr. Clinton “acted to punish the Iranian Government’s open support for terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Well, how Times change. For it turns out that today the New York Times Company itself has become a vendor to the Iranian regime of services to its nuclear program. The New York Times Company is selling the Iranian regime advertising space in Europe for the solicitation of bids on Iran’s nuclear reactors. The space was sold to the Iranian regime by the New York Times Company through its Paris Herald Tribune unit, 100% control of which the Times gained by forcing out its partner, The Washington Post Company.

Twelve years ago, when it supported the embargo, the Times Company noted that our intelligence agencies are convinced that Iran is pursuing “reactor and other nuclear technologies from Russia and China to develop atomic weapons.” It said it understood that the embargo would end not only purchases of Iranian oil by American companies but also that it would “halt remaining United States exports to Iran.” Declared the Times: “By barring the trade of American companies, Washington may have a chance of persuading its allies to apply economic pressures of their own.”

Today, however, the Times is collecting cash from the mullahs in return for helping them solicit bids for their nuclear reactors. When it was about this, it retreated behind the First Amendment, in what surely is one of the most bizarre statements ever issued by the Times Company. The Jerusalem Post quoted a spokesman for the Paris Herald as saying: “We believe that advertising should be as free and open as the dictates of honesty and decency allow. In our view, advertising is an essential ingredient in the broad concept of a free press.” Which misses the point so plainly that one has to figure the Times is just not seriously interested in this issue.

Certainly advertising is covered as much by the First Amendment as any other part of a newspaper, though accepting money for ads purchased by an enemy in a time of war mightn’t be. In any event, the question is why, even if a newspaper had the right to violate an embargo that applies to all other business concerns, the Times would want to help the Iranians with their reactor program in the first place. What happened at the Times between 1995, when Mr. Clinton was in the White House, and today?

Certainly it is not the Iranian mullahs who have changed. Or, if they have changed, it has been to grow only more hostile, active, and dangerous. And to have more plainly announced that their purpose is, among other things, to destroy the Jewish state. Iran has entered the fight against America’s own GIs in Iraq while pursuing nuclear weapons and vowing to destroy Israel. Why in the world would the New York Times start wanting to exchange goods and services with the Iranian nuclear agency at this moment in history?