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commentary
It Was Time for an Administration
to Break Foreign-Policy ‘Rules’
F

or 20 years, he had sowed terror and
confusion throughout the Middle
East with impunity. As head of Iran’
s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
Qassem Soleimani was the mastermind
of the world’
s leading state sponsor of ter-
rorism, as well as the second
most powerful person with-
in that oppressive Islamist
theocracy. No matter how
much mayhem he spread, he
believed that he was untouch-
able. And three American
administrations run by both
Democrats and Republicans validated that
belief, forgoing opportunities to kill the man
who had the blood of many Americans and
countless Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis and
others on his hands.
But following the orchestration of attacks
on American forces in Iraq and the stag-
ing of an assault on the U.S. embassy in
Baghdad, Soleimani’
s get-out-of-jail free
card that he had been given by the interna-
tional community and successive American
presidents expired.
When an American drone killed him

along with the leader of Iran’
s Iraqi terrorist
auxiliaries, what happened was more than
a settling of scores. It proclaimed to the
world that the old rules by which Iran had
been able to do its worst against the United
States, Israel and the West — never to face
any consequences — were no longer valid.
Much like his moves to recognize
Jerusalem as Israel’
s capital and move the
U.S. embassy there, Trump’
s authorization
of the attack on Soleimani proclaims that he
has thrown out the foreign-policy rulebook
that had restrained America in the past —
rules that wound up shielding bad actors
like Soleimani.
There’
s no way of knowing how far the
Iranian regime will go in order to retali-
ate for the major blow they have received.
American citizens and assets are now at
risk. Yet it is also possible that, as was the
case with Trump’
s pro-Israel policies, pre-
dictions of the world blowing up over this
will be exaggerated.
What we do know is that this is likely to
prove a crucial moment in the history of
the modern Middle East. For 40 years since
the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran,

the regime has been able to go on pursuing
its agenda of regional hegemony via terror
and subversion with the West acting as if
it could not or would not try to do much
about it.
Indeed, the guiding principle of the
Obama administration’
s foreign policy was
an effort to appease and accommodate the
Iranians, no matter what they did. President
Barack Obama said he hoped the nuclear
deal he negotiated with Tehran in 2015
would enable the regime to “get right with
the world.” But the ayatollahs didn’
t want
that opportunity. What they wanted was
the West’
s seal of approval for their nucle-
ar program and access to foreign markets
to sell the oil that would finance their pet
terrorists like the IRGC. the regine bluffed
Obama into conceding point after point in
the negotiations to where the pact actually
guaranteed that Iran would eventually get
a nuclear weapon, while at the same time
enriching and empowering the regime. And
after that, it doubled down on its adventur-
ism, laying waste to Syria while consolidat-
ing control in Lebanon and attempting to
do the same in Iraq.

Jonathan
Tobin

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