From Iran came the simplest, most pleasing lesson of all, that by lending support to the right foreign leader and by working through the right proxy forces, the United States could bolster those regimes it regarded as allies, and be rid of those it didn’t. For the first time, the United States had wrested back control of a nation falling into the Soviet camp, and it had done so for what, in the greater scheme of things, amounted to pocket change.
