Commentary
Middle East strategist, expert, and author Walid Phares explains why the United States went from slamming Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil” in former President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address to a nuclear deal that Iran had no intention of honoring in 2015 with the signing of the the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
His new book “Iran: An Imperialist Republic and U.S. Policy” provides an incisive look at what the late radio personality Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.”
The rest of the story is how and why the Obama administration threw an olive branch at Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in June 2009. Iran’s opposition, which received modest support from George W. Bush’s administration, was abandoned in favor of the rhetoric fueled by American pro-regime academics, think tanks, corporations, and lobbyists. Phares calls this coalition of American apologists for the Iranian regime the “Iran Lobby,” which proved extremely effective during the Obama years and with Joe Biden’s accession to the presidency in 2021….