Posted Sunday, November 8, 12:39 AM CST, 1:39 AM AM EST, 0639 GMT.

Top editorial and op-ed commentaries in the Sunday editions of the leading U. S. newspapers:

1) In the Washington Post, David Ignatius notes that little has come of the tentative agreement reached a month ago with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program. “The diplomatic stalemate is a setback for the Obama administration, which had made engagement with Iran one of its signature issues.” Meanwhile, within Iran there appears to be little appetite for a thaw in relations with the United States. Apparently, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen as a belligerent hardliner in the West, is under attack at home for being too accommodationist. “The challenge for President Obama … is how to reach an accommodation with an Iran that needs America as an adversary. And how can Obama do that without betraying the opposition that promises Iran’s best hope for change?”

2) In the WP, George Will notes that the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit appears unlikely to reduce any sort of significant agreement on reductions in emissions. “On Oct. 21, China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, and India, which ranks fourth — together they account for 26 percent of emissions — jointly agreed: They, with their combined one-third of the world’s population, will not play in what increasingly resembles a global game of climate-change charades. Neither nation is interested in jeopardizing its economic growth with emissions caps of a sort that never impeded the growth of the developed nations that now praise them.” Meanwhile, Americans “are worried about their wages, which will not be improved by clobbering a weak economy with the costs of a cap-and-trade carbon-reduction regime.”

3) In the New York Times, Frank Rich notes that the results of the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District could be cause for alarm — for Democrats. The victory by Democrat Bill Owens “increases the odds that the Republicans will not do Democrats the great favor of committing suicide between now and the next Election Day…. Mitt Romney didn’t endorse Hoffman despite right-wing badgering to do so. On Wednesday, Michael Steele dismissed the right’s mantra that somehow Hoffman’s loss could be called a victory and instead talked up the newly elected Republican governors who won by appealing to independents and moderates.” Meanwhile, Democrats run the risk of being seen as too cozy with Wall Street, as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is watered down while bankers treat themselves to healthy bonuses and an early allotment of the H1N1 flu vaccine.

4) In the NYT, Thomas Friedman has lost patience with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. “Right now we want it more than the parties. They all have other priorities today…. It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.” Under these circumstances, America should back away and wait for the situation to become less tolerable for the parties. “If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.”