As I wrote Wednesday, I expect the regime to win, in a bloodbath. Guns trump warm bodies. But it may well be a close-run thing.

If the regime does win, it will emerge from the carnage as an even deadlier enemy to the West. The only leverage the West will have is appeasement, and that has never worked, anytime or anywhere in history.

President Obama bet, with his Cairo speech, that it will work this time. He disavowed his predecessor’s bellicose rhetoric, and committed the U.S. to dialogue with Iran’s monstrous rulers.

President Reagan, who extracted more concessions from Soviet tyrants than all previous presidents combined, did not do so by making nice to them.