KARBALA, IRAQ — It has been just short of 39 years since Iranian students, acting at the behest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, ultimately holding 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Three and a half years later, a Hezbollah terrorist drove a truck laden with explosives into the Beirut compound of U.S. Marines in Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping mission, killing 241. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Iranian government gloated (even as ordinary Iranians held candlelight vigils). “The super-terrorist had a taste of its own bitter medicine,” Kayhan, a newspaper which acts as a mouthpiece for Iran’s supreme leader, declared.

Approximately half the U.S. population was born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and Iran’s flip from U.S. ally to adversary. I was eight years old when the embassy was seized, and I remember the explosion of anti-Iran graffiti, yellow ribbons, and constant news coverage. Those of my age group are now congressmen, ambassadors, colonels, and senior government officials; most do not remember Iran as an ally and Beirut as “the Paris of the Middle East.” Nor, for that matter, do many Americans visit Azerbaijan, a secular Shi’ite state which remains an important U.S. regional ally.