But then, as is his wont, Obama turned his attention back to domestic issues, and Libya descended into chaos. Terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliates and offshoots across the country, especially in Benghazi, the very city where feared Gaddafi massacres had moved Obama to action, grew more threatening. And in this city rescued by America, our casualties finally came, despite repeated requests for greater protection from Ambassador Stevens and his country team. There was no enhanced security before September 11, no help coming on September 11, and no visible retaliation after September 11. Retribution may yet be in prospect, but it would be a rare national security secret the Obama Administration has been able to restrain itself from leaking.

And the chaos across the Middle East and North Africa only grows. Yemen and Syria are torn by bloody civil wars, with al-Qaeda gaining significant strength in both countries. Mali is coming apart, as forces once under Gaddafi's control return home and struggle for supremacy with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, perhaps foreshadowing more extensive conflict both in Muslim states and countries like Nigeria where Muslim-Christian animosities run deep. Somalia remains a broken state, a refuge for pirates and terrorists. With Egypt increasingly under Brotherhood control, the fate of Jordan's monarchy, the only other Arab government formally at peace with Israel, is at best precarious. And as they feared while watching Mubarak topple, Gulf Co-operation Council states only grow more endangered.

They worry not only about declining stability and increased threats from the Muslim Brotherhood, radical Salafists and al-Qaeda, but from the looming menace of Iran's steadily advancing nuclear weapons programme. In November, the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest quarterly report again emphasised Tehran's continued progress across a broad range of nuclear activities, and also stressed Iran's disdainful stonewalling of IAEA efforts to resolve questions about its programme's military applications. And no wonder: there has never been the slightest doubt that the regime's objective was nuclear weapons. Economic sanctions have failed to stop Iran, and will continue to fail, despite imposing undoubted economic costs. Sanctions only work when they are comprehensive, swiftly and uniformly applied, and rigorously enforced, including with military power. That is very nearly the exact opposite of the Iran sanctions over the years. North Korea, the most heavily sanctioned country on earth, is already a nuclear power because China and Russia continue to sustain it, just as they and others continue to prop up the Iranian ayatollahs, who are still sufficiently robust that they in turn aid Assad's faltering regime in Syria.