If, on November 5, 1979, President Carter had told the Ayatollah Khoumeini, in no uncertain terms, that either our embassy personnel being held hostage would be safely on a plane, heading out of Iran, within 72 hours, or we would regret their passing in the attack which reduced Tehran and Qom to radioactive black holes in the ground, and meant it, almost every bad thing which has happened in the Middle East and with Iran would have been subsequently avoided.

Instead the President of the United States played the beta-male, and we have seen the effects his disastrous policy of weakness he generated.