Obama Should Give Peace a Chance With Iran
As the Syria crisis shows, Americans don’t want to fight another costly war. Is this finally the right time to make peace with Iran?
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When he took office in January 2009, Barack Obama flirted with two foreign policy initiatives that might have shaped the course of his presidency: a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan and a big push for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Realizing that neither was likely to succeed, he settled into what has been his dominant Middle East strategy ever since: Don’t get bogged down in the Middle East.
It makes sense. The military is exhausted. The American public is polarized. The government is in debt. Obama wants to be Eisenhower, the guy who ended the war in Korea and avoided sending ground troops to Vietnam. He wants to rein in America’s runaway empire and rebuild the domestic foundation of U.S. strength.