First Normalization, Then Nuclearization
In March 2010, Zbigniew Brzezinski made the comments in an interview on an Al Jazeera English TV show titled Empire that "The US can live with a nuclear Iran.” His justification was that since the United States had been able to live with a nuclear China, it could also live with Iran. Decades earlier, in 1979 — the year of the Iranian Revolution — Brzezinski was the National Security Advisor in Jimmy Carter’s administration, the same government that paved the way for Khomeini’s accession to power. Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter belong to the same faction of the Democratic Party, so much so that Obama’s cabinet, many years later, looked very similar to Carter’s — though Brzezinski did not hold an official position then. At that time he played the role of ideologue for that faction of the Democratic Party. In other words, when Brzezinski was promoting acceptance of an Islamic nuclear republic, the U.S. was preparing itself for the presidential candidacy of Brzezinski’s protégé, Barac...