The dangers of Obama’s Islamic Republic doctrine

When Barack Obama began his first term as president six years ago, foreign policy chatter was prone to including terms like “regime change” and “axis of evil” in discussions about Iran. But as Obama sought to break decisively with the legacy of his predecessor, George W. Bush, he moved rapidly in the opposite direction, offering an olive branch to the Iranian regime within a few weeks of assuming office.

In March 2009, Obama delivered a message to mark the Persian New Year in which he said, “The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities. And that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.”

As a declaration of policy intent, those remarks were refreshingly free of ambiguity. The reference to Iran as an “Islamic Republic” indicated that Washington’s goal from that point forward would not be getting rid of the regime that seized power during the 1979 revolution, but rather stabilizing it and encouraging it to behave more responsibly.

By the close of 2014, though, it was abundantly clear that America’s Iran policy—based on Obama’s “Islamic Republic” doctrine of trust in the regime—was in a dangerous mess. The nuclear negotiations between Iran and Western powers have yielded not a single gain, allowing the Iranians to continue with their uranium enrichment program while the International Atomic Energy Agency frets about the likely prospect that Tehran is continuing to operate clandestine nuclear facilities.