Syria’s Butcher Really Won the Iran Deal

There’s one person ecstatic about the Iran deal and Washington would probably prefer he just keep his mouth shut: Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Professing in a cable to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the newly agreed upon nuclear accord between the world’s major powers was a “historic achievement,” Assad went on to note his satisfaction that this would only strengthen Iran’s work for “peace and stability…in the region and the world.” Translation: Iran will further finance and militarily bolster Assad’s crumbling regime, not to mention other affiliates and proxies.

In crafting a largely technical arms control agreement, the U.S. has therefore objectively empowered its traditional enemies—the so-called “Axis of Resistance”—at the expense of its traditional allies, the Sunni-led Gulf States and their satellites, in what may prove to be a new age of deadly sectarian wars in the Middle East, of which Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are only a foretaste. As ever in geopolitical wrangles, it’s civilians who stand to suffer first and most severely...