Gary Sick, an American academic, worked under President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. He wrote an insightful book about the American/Iranian tragedy, All Fall Down; America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran. I used his book as a reference for the time lines of the crisis when writing my novel If Winter Comes.

Sick has written a thoughtful criticism of President Trump’s response to the Khashoggi murder. As might be expected, he faults Trump’s embrace of Mohammad bin Salman.

Trump, Sick writes, “while careless and ill-informed about every aspect of government, ultimately comes back to his few fundamental convictions: governing is a business, it’s all about profit, and he is the sole stable genius who knows how to make it work.”

Sick faults Trump for treating the U.S./Saudi relationship as merely a business deal to bring in money. The moral dimensions of the relationship escape the president.

Sick reminds us of a similar deal in the 1970s.

“We have done this before. In the 1970s our man was the shah of Iran.

“How did that work out?”