Half-a-Million Syrians Didn’t Have to Die

One reason that Iran became so powerful in the first place was the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. As Michael Doran argued in Mosaic at the time, the deal was part of a broader strategy of ceding control of much of the Middle East to Tehran. To that end, Barack Obama chose not to act when Bashar al-Assad crossed American red lines and waged war on his own people. As one of Obama’s advisers put it, the president would do nothing to “offend Iran’s supreme leader” and “cause Iran to walk away from the nuclear talks and forsake a monetary cornucopia in sanctions relief and foreign direct investment.”