In recent months, as the debate over Iran’s nuclear program has become increasingly heated, US President Obama and other senior officials have insisted that “containing” Iran is not an option.

Indeed, Obama assured Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March that his policy was “prevention,” even if that required using military force.

However, containment has been US policy toward Iran for the past 33 years and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Obama dare not say so, however, because containment has somehow become synonymous in certain circles with appeasement and acceptance of an Iran with nuclear weapons.

George Kennan, the great US Cold War strategist, coined "containment" to describe a range of actions designed to reduce the Soviet Union’s capacity for threatening Western interests. While military force was certainly an option, Kennan believed that economic and political support for fragile European societies was more likely to stop the Soviet advance. He predicted correctly that the Soviet system would ultimately dissolve because of internal contradictions and failure to produce a prosperous and contented society.