Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - "You can wait until a threat is imminent. You almost always pay for that"
middleast24 📍Washington, D.C., United States
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered a blunt reminder this week about the Islamic Republic's decades-long war against the United States, pushing back against the argument that Washington should have waited longer before acting against Iran. Her point was grounded in history. In 1979, after the Islamic Revolution, Zbigniew Brzezinski met with the new regime on behalf of President Carter and made clear the U.S. would not hand over the deposed Shah, who was in America receiving cancer treatment. Three days later, revolutionary students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Confrontation with the United States was not incidental to the regime. It was structural to its ideology and and raison d'etre from day one. The record since then speaks for itself. Hezbollah, Iran's primary proxy, killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The regime has maintained active assassination plots against sitting and former U.S. presidents and secretaries of state. Estimates from the Iraq war suggest Iranian-built IEDs and roadside bombs were responsible for 70 to 75 percent of American deaths before protective measures were put in place. And Iran actively works to indoctrinate Americans and others throughout the west. Rice said she wished that during her own nuclear negotiations with Iran, she had made clear that the United States would not tolerate the regime's behavior indefinitely. She did not. The bill for that patience has been accumulating for 47 years. "You can wait until a threat is imminent. You almost always pay for that."
