Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East, beginning with the Reagan administration. As the global economy grew, bringing an increasing reliance on oil, U.S. diplomatic and military energies were ever more fatefully absorbed by the Middle East until the Obama administration and its successors finally sought to disentangle America from the region. Grand Delusion explores the motivations, strategies, and shortcomings of each presidential administration from Reagan to today, exposing a web of intertwined events managed by a Washington policy process frequently ruled by wishful thinking and partisan politics. He questions the motives behind America's commitment to Israel; explodes the popular narrative of Desert Storm as a “good war”; and calls out the devastating consequences of our mistakes, particularly for people of the region trapped by the onslaught of American military action and pitiless economic sanctions.