Opinion: Trump, Obama and Congress will all be to blame for what happens with Iran
By George F. Will George F. Will Columnist covering politics and domestic and foreign affairs Email Bio Follow Columnist May 24 at 4:53 PM Difficulties with Iran will recur regularly, like the oscillations of a sine wave, and the recent crisis — if such it was, or is — illustrates persistent U.S.
The Economist, which is measured in its judgments and sympathetic to the United States, tartly referred to the supposed evidence of Iran’s intentions to attack U.S. forces, allies or “interests” as “suspiciously unspecific.” Such skepticism, foreign and domestic, reflects 16-year-old memories of certitudes about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: Remember Secretary of State Colin Powell spending days at the CIA receiving assurances about the evidence.
Fifteen years ago, Condoleezza Rice, then President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, said that an abstraction would not “allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon.” Allow? In 2012, President Barack Obama said: “Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” If — probably when — that policy fails, we shall have a policy of containment, or a major war.
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