ADVERTISEMENT Like Biden today, Carter found himself caught in a vice between international reputation abroad and threats to his government at home. At the time, the deposed shah’s supporters, including Kissinger, clamored to ensure that the U.S. rejected Iran’s revolutionary Islamic leaders; when Europeans lined up to present their credentials to the new government in 1979, Carter’s envoys were not among them. Pressure from regional allies such as Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, raised questions about the value of American friendship, a point Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party’s aspiring presidential candidate, made at every opportunity according to Carter’s memoirs. Risk preparedness seemed best served by a go-slow policy designed, it was hoped, to build leverage. Lost on Carter and his deeply divided Cabinet was that decisiveness grounded in national interest and legal principles, is the prerogative of great power — as President Trump