In an analysis published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writes that though the United States in recent years has become more accepting of Tehran’s positions, “the changes in U.S.-Iran relations have been decidedly one-sided.”

Singh writes that while Washington’s policy of “persauad[ing] Tehran to make a strategic shift ” and “adhere to international norms and reinforce regional peace and stability” would be “welcome,” “Iran does not, however, appear to have undergone any such change.”

Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon has continued unabated even as the group has thwarted efforts to strengthen Lebanese sovereignty and dispatched forces to Syria. According to the U.S. director of national intelligence, Hezbollah has increased “its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level that we have not seen since the 1990s.” Tehran also continues to support non-state actors such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen and–after a brief period of apparent estrangement accompanying the 2011 Arab uprisings–Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.

This is not just the case in Lebanon. Iran is supporting Shiite militias in Iraq, and alienating that country’s Sunni population, whose support the United States is seeking to create a stable government there. In Syria, in direct opposition to American policy, Iran supports the brutal government of President Bashar al-Assad. Even in the case of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which both the United States and Iran seek to defeat, Iran claims that the United States is behind the creation of ISIS.

Singh concludes:

In short, what has changed is not Iran’s strategy but the American response. We are choosing to overlook, rather than counter, long-standing Iranian policies. This–combined with the concessions we have made in the nuclear talks, the ambiguity of U.S. policy toward the Assad regime and rising tensions with once-stalwart allies in the region–reinforce the impression that the United States, not Iran, is undergoing a strategic shift.

Similarly, an editorial last month in The Washington Post observed, regarding the nuclear talks with Iran, that the administration had made significant efforts to address Iran’s concerns, but that “[i]f Iran has made similar efforts to bridge the gaps between the two sides, there is no report of them.”

[Photo: U. S. Department of State / WikiCommons ]