The Lessons of the Syria Deal, in Iran and Beyond

In late-August and early September, when the Obama administration was still seeking to generate support for the use of force against Syria after Damascus had crossed the “red line” of large-scale use of chemical weapons, one of the arguments it used was that failure to do so would undermine the credibility of America’s threat to strike Iran if Tehran ever built nuclear weapons. That argument may have been true at the time, but the situation has become more complex since the U.S. and Russia reached an agreement to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons peacefully. By explicitly stating, partly for domestic reasons […]