NOAH ROTHMAN: Obama’s Iran Is Trump’s Dilemma.

Questions abound as to how Trump will prosecute the conflict in Iraq against ISIS when some of America’s chief allies in that conflict are the Iran-backed Shiite militias. Thousands of members of those militia groups are in the fight to retake Mosul from ISIS, and some of them have been accused of crimes against humanity. While U.S. brass has praised the discipline of some of these forces, American military officials have nothing glowing to say about Iran’s conduct in Syria. Iranian air and ground forces began streaming into Syria as early as 2012, and Tehran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has only deepened over the last four years.

While Trump administration has made it clear he desires rapprochement with Russia, Moscow is working hand-in-hand with Damascus and Tehran to ensure Bashar al-Assad emerges victorious. The Trump administration’s desire to see Iran punished for its provocations against the United States is going to slam into its preference for a thaw in Russo-American relations, particularly considering that the company with which Vladimir Putin surrounds himself have hands that as soaked in American blood as were Rafsanjani’s. If the Trump administration hopes to see the Middle East revert to a sort of status quo ante, in which Tehran is again relegated to the role of local pariah, the Trump White House is going to have to reconcile its contradictory attitudes toward Moscow.

And Putin’s Kremlin is going to have to decide if it’s worth enabling potentially nuclear-armed terrorists in order to defeat terrorists armed with garbage trucks.