The need to support the vast Iranian oppositon to the rule of the mullahs

Whenever the subject of Iran comes up, as it is now with the negotiations in Geneva, I turn to Michael Ledeen. Today Ledeen notes that an Israeli supporter of Obama is blaming George W. Bush for our failure to deal effectively with the Iranian mullahs.

One doesn’t have to admire Bush’s strategy–like Obama, he negotiated with Iran and was ready to sign a deal in 2006–to excuse Obama, who came to office believing that Iran’s hostility to us was our own fault, and that once the ayatollahs saw they had a friend in the White House, all would be well. That hasn’t worked out well for him, or for the United States, or for the millions of Iranians he abandoned in 2009, or for the thousands of American soldiers killed or maimed by Iranian killers and their proxies in the region.

Bush’s Iran policy was a feckless disaster, to be sure. He thought he would deal with Iran after Iraq and Afghanistan had been brought under control. He failed to realize that the Iranians (and Syrians) could not tolerate American victories on their borders, and that it was folly to postpone a serious strategy against the tyrants in Tehran. Just look at Iraq today, where the slaughter exceeds that in Syria. Is that the result of “too little, too late?” Hardly. It’s the result of Obama’s “turn tail and run” in Iraq and Afghanistan, elements in a broader retreat from the region.

Hard to blame that policy on Bush.

Mr. Shavit is right to say that Iran, not Iraq, should have been Bush’s primary target after 9/11. But the central mission should have been the Iranian regime, not its centrifuges. He’s also right that we didn’t have to send armies into Iran, but he never once talks of supporting the vast Iranian opposition. That strategy worked against the Soviet Union, and might well have worked–indeed it might still work, even at this late hour–against the Iranian theocracy.