Our Predictable Faceoff With Iran by Lawrence J. Haas, US News & World Report
We now face the ironic, yet all-too-predictable, result of years of U.S. appeasement of Iran in order to secure a global nuclear deal: U.S. military involvement in a proxy war with the Islamic Republic in Yemen.
In recent days, an exchange of missile attacks between Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the United States puts the lie to President Barack Obama's argument that the nuclear deal would make war between the United States and Iran less likely. Instead, recent events justify the concerns of critics that Washington's numerous eye-popping concessions to Tehran to secure the nuclear deal, along with Washington's stubborn refusal to address Iranian provocations on the high seas, would serve to embolden Iran to pursue its regional ambitions even more aggressively than it had before.
To be sure, the United States didn't trade missile attacks with Iran directly. But Iran's fingerprints were all over the Houthi move against the U.S. military, and Tehran responded to the U.S. attack by sending two warships to the region where American ships are patrolling…