[Caroline Glick] For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel.Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic.
So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of "students" in central Tehran to free the hostages.
So too, as Smith noted, the Carter administration was propelled by guilt. The worldviews of many members of the administration had been shaped on radical university campuses in the 1960s. They agreed with the Iranian revolutionaries who cursed Americans as imperialists. They perceived Khomeini and his followers as "authentic" Third World actors who were giving the Americans their comeuppance.
Khomeini and his "Death to America" shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, "plausibly deniable" doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies.
During the Iraq War from 2003-2011, Iran’s aggression reached new heights. Iran organized the Shiite militias that waged war against the US forces in Iraq. It also supported Al-Qaida in Iraq which organized in Iran and used Iran as its logistical base for operations.
More than six hundred American forces were killed and thousands were wounded in attacks carried out with Iranian-made improvised explosive devices, (IADs). Yet rather than confront Iran for its aggression and take action against it, the Bush administration tried to make a deal with the mullahs.
Under Obama, reaching an accord with Iran was the singular goal of US foreign policy. Every other goal was subordinated to Obama’s burning desire to appease Iran at the expense of Israel and the US’s Sunni Arab allies.