Can Trump Reverse Dems’ Five Decades Of Iran-Policy Disaster?
I & I Editorial Board
January 16, 2026
Will the U.S. soon launch a devastating strike to take out Iran’s shaken fundamentalist Muslim regime? Or just wait for enraged Iranians to topple the teetering mullahs? Either way, Iran’s regime looks finished. So what should we do? As a start, roll back President Jimmy Carter’s tragic Iran mistakes of nearly 50 years ago that still win Democratic support today.
The radical regime in Tehran must go. Iranians have tired of inflation, corruption, and oppression by their own government. The mullahs recognize no rights, and routinely imprison, torture, and kill their own citizens, as extensively documented.
It’s a rogue government, one that also supplies money, weapons, training, and personnel to Islamic terrorist groups and renegade governments. Since seizing power in 1979, it’s been responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.
And yet, it’s important to understand how we ended up with such a lethal enemy, and to remember one thing clearly: Iran and Israel were the U.S.’s two most important strategic allies in the Mideast in 1976.
“When Jimmy Carter left the presidency merely four years later, Iran was no longer our ally,” author Paul Kengor wrote. “It had become our worst enemy in the Middle East. The country that in January 1977 had viewed America as its best friend and benefactor now burned U.S. flags in the streets and denounced us as ‘the Great Satan.’ “
It’s since become the Democrats’ largest, and longest-running, foreign-policy disaster, after the Vietnam War.
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https://issuesinsights.com/2026/01/16/can-trump-reverse-dems-five-decades-of-iran-policy-disaster/
