Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana.
Jeffrey Herf, writing in
The American Interest,
notes that the U.S. government refuses to take Iran's anti-Semitism seriously. Even if its leaders' public statements do not reflect popular opinion, the public does not make Iran's decisions, the Ayatollahs do.
The irrationality of Iran’s government has received scant attention in the United States government, which seems unable to believe that people could put their faith in a post-apocalyptic messiah. That is both a failure of imagination and a failure of policy.
It wouldn't be the first time such beliefs led to vast tragedy, within the last century.
