According to a pervasive academic narrative, many journalists, and the rhetoric of the Obama administration, the woes of the Middle East since World War II have been shaped by wrongheaded and even disastrous American meddling. George Simpson, Jr. argues that this is all wrong, bringing evidence from the U.S. role in the creation of Israel, the 1953 Iranian coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and the Six-Day War:

Examining the State Department spokesman Ned Price’s remarks on Monday regarding Washington’s approach to the Islamic Republic, Elliott Abrams detects two crucial points on which the administration has been unclear. The first relates to Price’s comment that, “if Iran returns to full compliance with the [2015 nuclear] deal, the United States would be prepared to do the same.”