The Dual Containment of Iran and Iraq

The idea of dual containment is that you have basically two tyrannies, which are pressing their own populations as counterweights to one another but they are existing in perpetuity. And, and that itself to me is a kind of cruelty if you want to think about it as grand strategy or great power politics from the US being a great power. The idea was you'd have a weekend both balancing each other like you described but the practicality of it is that over time, you would see Iran pursuing its nuclear weapons and Iraq, constantly pushing the envelope on sanctions to the point of collapse pursuing its weapons of mass destruction.