A Reckoning for Obama's Foreign-Policy Legacy

Embedded in any policy is some theory of victory some explanation, no matter how inchoate or ill-considered, that explains why this might work. So too with President Trump’s decision to walk away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement with Iran so ungainly that even the acronym JCPOA seems elegant by comparison. The nominal theory of victory here is preposterous: that Iran will come to heel, retreat from its nefarious activities in the Middle East, end ancillary programs such as its ballistic-missile work that support the nuclear program, and permanently renounce its nuclear program in word and deed. Such behavior would be inconsistent with anything Iran has done in the past and would be a crushing humiliation that would jeopardize the very survival of the regime.