The worst case in Iran is not that the regime murders thousands of civilians and survives in power. The worst case is that the regime commits mass murder and survives in power despite American intervention. The result would resemble what happened to President Jimmy Carter in 1980. When the Marines failed to extract American hostages from Iran, operational failure led to domestic diminishment. Carter’s clean-up in an election year accepted the ayatollahs as the legitimate rulers of Iran, because no one else was in a position to seize the crown.

The Obama-Biden folly of trying to reconcile with Iran by indulging its leaders’ millenarian psychopathy produced a similar worst-case scenario. America squandered its credibility as Iran’s nuclear program tiptoed past every red line while America and the Europeans winked. Allowed to export oil, Iran funnelled cash to the Islamist militias that underpinned its empire-building across the Middle East. The result was the regional war that Hamas launched against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That culminated, at least for now, in President Donald Trump attacking Iran’s nuclear........

© Washington Examiner