During the 1970s, Americans hotly debated whether we should approach the Soviet Union in the spirit of “détente” or confront it and, if possible, roll it back, but virtually everyone agreed that the Soviet Union must at a minimum be contained. Except on the far left, nobody seriously suggested scaling back U.S. power or accommodating Soviet demands on major fronts. Yet that is precisely the policy President Barack Obama has embraced toward Iran, in the teeth of opposition from U.S. allies, Congress, and public opinion. The result is a Middle East that grows more unstable and dangerous by the day.
What makes this particularly tragic is that, early in Obama’s first term, we had Iran on the ropes. After three decades of war, isolation, and sanctions, the Iranian regime was as hostile to the West as ever, yet by 2009 the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, which was supposed to be a worldwide millenarian revolution like Communism, had been successful nowhere outside Iran except Lebanon.
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