April 12, 2006: Former National Security Adviser Warns that Attacking Iran Will ‘End America’s Present Role’ in the World

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Carter, is grim about the ramifications of a US military strike against Iran. “I think of war with Iran as ending America’s present role,” he says. “Iraq may have been a preview of that, but it’s still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war with Iran, we’ll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will condemn us. We will lose our position in the world.” Brzezinski says that success in Iran is simple: the US just needs to outwait Iran. “The mullahs aren’t the future of Iran, they’re the past,” he says. [Washington Post, 4/12/2006; Unger, 2007, pp. 346]