Myron Magnet, writing for City Journal:
For all their differences, President Barack Obama uncannily resembles his Democratic predecessor, President Jimmy Carter, in his stiff-necked, self-righteous inability to listen to others or to learn from experience or history. Against ferocious opposition at home and abroad, he is about to repeat the grievous mistake of appeasing Iran that Carter made over three decades ago and do even more geopolitical damage than the hapless peanut farmer wreaked in 1979.
Recall the history. On February 1, 1979, two weeks after the cancer-ridden Shah of Iran left his country in the hands of a caretaker as he wandered the world in search of treatment, his fanatical opponent, Islamist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned from his 14-year Parisian exile and within a week had engineered the overthrow of the shah’s feeble substitute and installed his own puppet regime. Not only did Iran’s Islamists hail the ayatollah’s return; Carter’s United Nations ambassador, the painfully naïve Andrew Young, lauding Islam as “a vibrant cultural force in today’s world,” prophesied that the ayatollah himself—with ferocious indignation flashing from his eyes and bristling from his beard under his sharia-chic turban—would prove “somewhat of a saint.” On February 15, the saintly imam began murdering Iran’s officer corps, and on April Fool’s Day, which he called “the first day of a government of God,” he declared his nation an Islamic republic. In mid-May, the U.S. Senate condemned Iran’s systematic slaughter of its officers, a rebuke Iran met by recalling its ambassador from Washington. By July, mullahs began publicly taking control of the government.
On October 22, just when the Carter administration and the mullahs seemed to be finding a way to get along, the shah—his eagle-proud face pain-worn and his wasted body too small for his once-resplendent, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-ornate uniform—arrived in New York for cancer treatment. Less than two weeks later, on November 4, a mob of “students” invaded and seized the American embassy in Tehran and took its 68 employees hostage, though they soon released the 15 women and African-Americans, and later set free another hostage suffering from multiple sclerosis. The other 52 Americans endured 444 days of captivity. How far the mullahs engineered this feat as retribution for America’s welcome of the shah is unknown; their initial assurances that all would be well would prove consistent with Iran’s habitual double-dealing.
Carter’s initial response was entirely correct. On November 14, a fleet of U.S. warships sped into the Indian Ocean. But then Carter entangled himself in a bewildering web of fruitless international negotiations at the UN and the World Court, organizations whose keynote is cynicism and bad faith, and whose chief product is hot air not action.
Recall the history. On February 1, 1979, two weeks after the cancer-ridden Shah of Iran left his country in the hands of a caretaker as he wandered the world in search of treatment, his fanatical opponent, Islamist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned from his 14-year Parisian exile and within a week had engineered the overthrow of the shah’s feeble substitute and installed his own puppet regime. Not only did Iran’s Islamists hail the ayatollah’s return; Carter’s United Nations ambassador, the painfully naïve Andrew Young, lauding Islam as “a vibrant cultural force in today’s world,” prophesied that the ayatollah himself—with ferocious indignation flashing from his eyes and bristling from his beard under his sharia-chic turban—would prove “somewhat of a saint.” On February 15, the saintly imam began murdering Iran’s officer corps, and on April Fool’s Day, which he called “the first day of a government of God,” he declared his nation an Islamic republic. In mid-May, the U.S. Senate condemned Iran’s systematic slaughter of its officers, a rebuke Iran met by recalling its ambassador from Washington. By July, mullahs began publicly taking control of the government.
On October 22, just when the Carter administration and the mullahs seemed to be finding a way to get along, the shah—his eagle-proud face pain-worn and his wasted body too small for his once-resplendent, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-ornate uniform—arrived in New York for cancer treatment. Less than two weeks later, on November 4, a mob of “students” invaded and seized the American embassy in Tehran and took its 68 employees hostage, though they soon released the 15 women and African-Americans, and later set free another hostage suffering from multiple sclerosis. The other 52 Americans endured 444 days of captivity. How far the mullahs engineered this feat as retribution for America’s welcome of the shah is unknown; their initial assurances that all would be well would prove consistent with Iran’s habitual double-dealing.
Carter’s initial response was entirely correct. On November 14, a fleet of U.S. warships sped into the Indian Ocean. But then Carter entangled himself in a bewildering web of fruitless international negotiations at the UN and the World Court, organizations whose keynote is cynicism and bad faith, and whose chief product is hot air not action.
Whole thing here.
