Well, Obama wanted to establish Iran as a regional power to “balance” things in the Middle East, that is, an opponent to Israel.

This passed as “intellectual and sophisticated” among democrats.

Not just Dems.

It’s been an article of faith among a big swath of the GOPe foreign policy establishment, for many years, that if we just let them take out Israel, the Middle East would calm down. James Baker was a big believer in that one.

Our ‘educated elites’ are a disaster area, and have been for decades.

Not sure President Trump’s first term was all under his control.
Europe does seem to have their Marxists siding up to the Muslims invasion and letting the invaders do whatever they want.

— Skip

We know Trump’s first term was not under his control. This was partly his fault and partly the sheer entrenched power of the Establishment/Deep State.

I don’t think there’s any indication that BO ‘hates Jews’ or has many peculiar or original perspectives on world affairs. To me, he seems in his attitudes and his character and personality like a standard-issue higher ed apparatchik (student affairs division), bar his affection for luxury accommodations and palling around with celebrities.

— Art Deco

No doubt about most of that. It was a joke at the time that when you heard Obama speak, you were hearing the voice of the Faculty Lounge.

That said, while I don’t know if BHO is anti-semitic per se, he absolutely hates Netanyahu, and he is absolutely pro-Iranian. We don’t have to speculate, we could see his policies unfold in real time.

Former Legislator gives a good summation of our recent decades. I would add a few points.

The Vietnam period revealed a truth that has haunted America ever since: that our educated/intellectual class hates their own country and their own civilization (and sometimes I think they privately hate themselves and project it), and the elite governing class they trained has been trained to do the same.

It haunted us dealing with Iran in the 1970s, it haunted Reagan in the 1980s as he tried to deal with the Soviet threat, it haunted us in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a constant. This group was far more powerful and influential back then than it is now. (I think their real power/influence peaked under late Bush II/early Obama.)

As Former Legislator noted, the USSR was a real and present danger in those days, and avoiding nuclear escalation was a reality that could not be ignored.

Carter himself was a strange mix of sagacity and naivete. At heart, he was sort of like Woodrow Wilson, he thought that the world could be fixed by logic and argument. He was of course wrong. I have heard reports that he was so averse to using force that during the planning for the abortive hostage rescue mission, he asked if the men could be armed with non-lethal weapons. I can’t swear to the truth of that story, but I heard it from a lefty.

That failed resuce mission is another reason for nothing being done. The American military was in disastrous shape in the 1970s. It wasn’t until well into the Reagan years that the damage was restored, and the intellectual class was fighting Reagan every step of the way as he did it.

Also, the mullahs were far more popular at home in the 1970s and 1980s than they are now. Remember, the Islamic Republic came to power on the back of a wave of popular religious enthusiasm. It took a long time for the reality of their venality, oppressiveness, and incompetence to erode that enthusiasm away.

Sometimes something can be possible at one point and not possible at another, because of changing conditions.

In 1979, we had the feckless Jimmah as President, but also a perceived heavily competent, nuclear-armed, USSR foe backing the Islamists. OPEC wielded real power to grind US economy to a halt. Vietnam had only ended a few years earlier in a humiliating way for the US.

Reagan election got the hostages back; he focused on the Soviet threat, and having them crumble, because they were the funding patron. The benefit of that was not reaped until the 1990s. The Iranians and Iraqis also were busily fighting each other throughout the 1980s.

With the first Gulf war under GHWBush, we stupidly decided to tie ourselves to the morality of war under UN auspices. So Kuwait was the only goal, with obvious adverse consequences seen later.

Clinton was all about coasting off the peace dividend from the downfall of the USSR. Never would have had a mandate from his own party, or the people having been elected with a plurality; treated jihadism on US soil as criminal vs. military.

With Gulf II, GHB followed the same “we should go through the UN” model as Bush 41, and could not retain allies to go into Iran. My opinion is that he was never a strong strategic thinker; combine that with his family interests (ditto on Cheney) being too enmeshed in personal relationships in the mideast to actually name Islamofascist jihadism as the problem. And he cared too much about the political left, thinking they were still part of “Old America.”

During Bush I the Saudis were heavily funding Wahhabi Islam to counter the Iranians, and the Muslim Brotherhood. That dropped off precipitously with MBS in 2017 during the Trump 1 term.

During the Obama years, Obama’s foreign policy record was atrocious for obvious reasons. Yet ironically, Obama getting cozy with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt led to them taking power, and then getting tossed. el-Sisi banned them, and has kept Egypt under control for over a decade.

Libya is still a mess, but cannot project countervailing power.

US energy independence has helped considerably.

Russia showed it cannot even properly take over Ukraine.

China has shown its preference for long game institutional controls/operations and proxy attacks vs. direct warmaking.

No-one overtly supported the Palestinians as proxies after October 7, besides Iran.

Iraq is (relatively) quiet.
Turkey is (relatively) quiet.
Afghanistan is a basket case still, but needling Pakistan, not us.
Palestinians are a mess, but cannot project countervailing power.
We don’t need or care about Europe today in a way that we might have cared in the 1990s (and France/UK still had stronger ties to their former colonies vs now).

So, today, you simply do not have the same threat-projection risks by other nations that you did in the 80s/90s/early 2000s.

October 7 2023 fundamentally changed the Israeli psyche as well for what I would call the “normies.”

And, if the Iranians really did give the perfect excuse of, we have enough nuclear material to make 11 warheads, if the best time to go was in the past, the next best time to go is today; many of the Iranian people are clearly ready for it, and hopefully can make something of it.

Add in what I would call “jihadist fatigue,” and more and more evidence that not everyone wants to be Western Civ, so fine, we’ll let you be, but don’t mess with us.

If the world’s bad actors should have learned anything since 2001, it’s “brag about your nuclear program and threaten your enemies with lakes of fire AFTER you have the bombs and not before”.

Balls.

The Iran Question is All About China

https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/the-iran-question-is-all-about-china?r=1ifx2i&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Here’s Kudlow interviewing Gen. Jack Keane (Ret) for the latest on Iran.

–Fox Busines, “Gen. Jack Keane: US and Israel are systematically shredding the Iranian regime”
https://youtu.be/pooOhfD-vyo?t=418

Kudlow asks Keane directly about the Iranian claim of enough 60% enriched uranium for 11 bombs.

Keane doubts the uranium exists or if it does, it is buried at the bottom of those sites we bombed last June. He notes that the Iranians are always “full of bluster.”

In any event Keane emphasizes that the US and Israel have comprehensive plans to locate and destroy all locations, equipment, materials and people involved in the nuclear weapons process. He is certain those plans will be successful.

Well, mistakes are made… (or are they?—Well, let’s indeed HOPE they are this case…)