Trump keeps negotiating while Iran plays the long game America keeps missing

On Nov. 4, 1979, I was serving as duty officer at the headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division in Bad Kreuznach, West Germany. Late that day, a message arrived: Radical Iranian revolutionaries had stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and seized dozens of Americans. My job was to carry that report to the division commander, Maj. Gen. William J. Livsey, and keep him informed as the situation developed.

No special orders came down. No one fully grasped that we were watching the birth of a geopolitical...