Trump’s Iran deal could place his legacy in the hands of Tehran

It began with the fate of hostages. Donald Trump’s first recorded foray into politics was sparked by the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran, which saw 52 American diplomats held incommunicado for 444 days. The event set the stage for more than four decades of torturous relations between the US and Iran . It may also have kickstarted Trump’s long journey to the White House, which is now in danger of being defined by his decision to attack Iran’s Islamic regime. In October 1980, a standoff that had started a year earlier had ballooned into a national trauma, with the hostages still in captivity and then president Jimmy Carter flailing in the face of Iranian intransigence. Trump lashed out in an NBC interview with Rona Barrett, one of the US’s most noted gossip writers of the time. “That they hold our hostages is just absolutely, and totally ridiculous,” he told Barrett, arguing the crisis should have been resolved with a military invasion. “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries.” Within a month, Carter – who had been rendered a symbol of US powerlessness as Iranian revolutionaries chanted “America can’t do a damn thing” – was defeated in a landslide by his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan . …