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How America Got Serious about Iran
(Daily Caller) James Carter and Jacob Choe - Thirty years of engagement with Iran - the diplomacy, the frameworks, the endless European intermediaries - produced a regime with more centrifuges, more proxies, and more confidence than when the process started. The foreign policy establishment responded to each setback by calling for more of the same. Trump looked at that record and found it embarrassing. At this point, Iran's nuclear sites are rubble. Its proxy network is the weakest it's been in a decade. The regime spent years believing it could outlast American attention. The assumptions that the regime would moderate with engagement, that Europe could broker something durable, and that military options were too destabilizing to seriously consider are gone. Iran's capabilities are degraded, its proxies weakened, and its assumptions shattered. That's not a starting point previous administrations managed to reach. For the first time in 30 years, America is doing the work from a position of strength rather than wishful thinking. James Carter served as Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. Jacob Choe serves as the Eurasia Center's Asia Program Director.