SULAYMANI, Iraq — Earlier this week, I compared the apparent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi allegedly on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to the 1990 execution of British journalist Farzad Bazoft by Saddam Hussein, who, like bin Salman, politicians and pundits once painted as a moderate reformer, blinding themselves to his sociopathic and murderous nature. That shows misjudgment by columnists like the New York Times’ Tom Friedman and the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and also shows how autocratic regimes trade access for public relations.

But is the sad reality of Saudi Arabia reason to conclude, as Iran partisans in Washington have suggested or hinted, that the United States would be better off oriented toward Iran? Indeed, because of the long-standing ethnic and religious rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, much of the broader U.S. debate surrounding policies toward Riyadh and Tehran are cast in either/or terms. The Twitter feeds of the National Iranian American Council and its officers, for example, while they purport to support the civil rights of Iranians in the United States, seem far more consumed with criticizing Israel and Saudi Arabia in line with Tehran’s policy than they are with their stated mission.