I just finished reading Scott Anderson’s excellent “King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation,” published last year prior to the U.S. military attacks against Iran in June 2025 and then earlier this year. Considering what’s unfolding today in the Middle East, I highly recommend the Pulitzer-finalist book. It’s a terrific history of the rise and fall of Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi (“King of Kings”) – and the tense and conflict-ridden relationship between our two countries since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The following graf about President Carter’s initial response to the Iranian militants’ seizure of U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran in 1979 jumped out at me:

Signalizing that the lives of the American prisoners were his paramount concern, (Carter) embarked on a calm and measured effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement. What the president might have insufficiently considered was that, with that signaling, he had just handed the Iranians the ultimate trump card and, much like his efforts to placate Tehran regime over the previous nine months through patience and moderation, set out on a path from which there could be no easy exit. Certainly, Ayatollah Khomeini figured this out, and it probably explained why he so abruptly changed course after his meeting with (his foreign secretary). ‘The Americans can’t do a damned thing,’ he told supporters a short time later. ‘The speculation about American military intervention is nonsense.’

Not an exact historic carbon-copy of what’s unfolding today, but it’s close enough. Substitute “American prisoners were his paramount concern” with “opening the Strait of Hormuz is his paramount concern,” and you get an idea what the Iranians are once again thinking today. …  What a stupid war, caused yet again by “hubris, delusion and catastrophic miscalculation.”