MOSAIC
by Michael Doran
July 30, 2015

Those who think the Iranians outwitted us fail to recognize one very important thing: the White House never intended to contain Iran.

….both parties are reinforcing the fiction that Obama is truly interested in containing Iran. In fact, the White House has consistently displayed an aversion to countering Iran. Time and again, America’s allies in the Middle East have begged the president to help them curtail Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and time and again he has refused. His aspiration for equilibrium is instead based on the conviction that, thanks to his diplomacy, Iran will voluntarily come to place limits on its own ambitions. With that aspiration, the nuclear deal—an explicit recipe for strengthening all elements of Iranian power, political, military, and economic—is entirely compatible. READ MORE