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Following the terror attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, American diplomat Ryan Crocker opened a diplomatic channel to the Iranians on working together against al-Qaida. Shortly thereafter, in January 2002, President George W. Bush scolded Tehran as being part of an “Axis of Evil.” In D.C. mythology, the president’s description of Tehran’s elites—“an unelected few repress[ing] the Iranian people’s hope for freedom” and “pursuing nuclear weapons”—so offended the Iranians that their negotiators quit, and American diplomats experienced a “traumatic moment.” At the State Department, Bill Burns was especially dejected.

My own tiny mind boggles at the fact that a regime that kept up a daily stream of insults at the United States, with “Death to America” being chanted in its parliament, mosques, schools, along with ritual immolation and trampling of the American flag for four decades retreated to a fainting couch at a single insulting reference in a speech and ruled out working together against al-Qaida—many of whose surviving leaders found refuge in Tehran.

I've seen that before: the absurd notion, happily spread by the Obama crowd, that Bush's "axis of evil" speech was somehow a blunder that sabotaged the chances of peace with Iran.

Plus an interesting comparison with the al-Qaeda head:

Osama bin Laden merits understandably few mentions in Azizi’s book, since the two killers never met, and yet to grasp Soleimani it is worth a comparison with his Arab coeval (the two men may have been born less than a week apart in March 1957; historians spar over the three possible birth dates for Soleimani, with Azizi favoring the earliest one). They had much in common: high intelligence, a flair for theatrics and motivational speaking, and similar pathologies rooted in early-life humiliation. Both showed the world, and their closest confidants, modest, humble, and soft-spoken exteriors that masked ruthless egoism and bloodlust.

Some parallels originate in the two regional wars birthed by the Islamic revolution. Iran’s torching of its relations with its American ally, and the diplomatic isolation brought on by the hostage-taking of American diplomats—plus the purge of its own senior military personnel (possibly exceeding 12,000, according to historian Abbas Amanat)—emboldened the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to invade Iran, two aggressions unthinkable had the shah been in power. The Afghan jihad shaped Osama as the Iran-Iraq War shaped Qassem. Both budding psychopaths experienced slaughter at an early age, and both men’s world views were formed during the barbarities of those wars, both of which were consequences of a revolution that was a disaster not only for Iran but for multiple neighboring countries—yet is still often treated as a somehow necessary and desirable consequence of the shah’s rule, for which the United States is assumed to bear a large portion of responsibility.

But whereas bin Laden ended up hiding out as a fugitive in Pakistan, Soleimani only became bolder with time, increasingly seeking publicity in the belief that he was safe from harm. Which he wasn't.