Since before Iran’s 1979 revolution, Western policy toward that country has been shaped less by realities on the ground than by what foreign policymakers found convenient to believe about them. The myths have changed over the decades. The cost of believing them has not.
In late 1977, Jimmy Carter famously toasted the Shah’s Iran as “an island of stability.”Within fifteen months, the monarchy had collapsed, and the foreign-policy establishment that had built its assumptions around the Shah was left scrambling to comprehend a revolution it had utterly failed to foresee. The lesson should have been unmistakable: never again mistake repression for permanence, or assume that the political order in Iran is immune to upheaval. But the lesson was never truly learned.
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Source: https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2026/05/20/the_old_and_new_myths_endangering_western_iran_policy_1183844.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawR9uJlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEexLitCUHeIzZr1n35lbznmNEskRpY-iubO3tYfz_tObRQoTLCX4NFcTxL2Wg_aem_DHk83cKMK8eZW_V5NExAFA
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