There are two fallacies about American policy toward Iran.
The first, subscribed to by many liberals, is that the Bush administration's black-and-white, "Axis of Evil" approach to Iran only strengthened the country's hard-line forces. The second, which many conservatives proffer, is that Obama's "naive," blame-America-first foreign policy weakens our credibility and empowers our adversaries.
Both of these simplistic understandings are wrong. Rather it appears that both Bush and Obama applied the right policy toward Iran at the right time, and that the combination of both administrations' policies undermined the stability of one of the world's most dangerous regimes.
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