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In the October 12 issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria makes a case for containing rather than confronting Iran, partly because he expects “a massive outpouring of support for the Iranian regime” if its nuclear-weapons facilities are attacked by the U.S. or Israel. “This happens routinely when a country is attacked by foreign forces, no matter how unpopular the government,” he writes.

As a precedent, he cites how Russians rallied to Stalin when Germany invaded in 1941. But of course Russians rallied to Stalin. No viable political opposition existed as it does today in Iran, and besides: they were attacked by the Nazis. The Germans weren’t liberators. Russia was not going to be treated better by foreign totalitarians than by its own. Even the...