I think I have to start with the last option. The Containment is what the US Foreign Policy in Perspective calls routinely hostile activities. This is a quite important one too, if not the most important, which is essentially responsible for the situation we are currently in. The authors of Which Path to Persia has a confusing take on this with contradictory statements.
Let's quote some. On one hand they say it's the last choice for the US:
> Containment is always America’s last policy choice.
> When a state proves too hostile for Engagement or a diplomatic compromise, when it is too strong to be invaded or otherwise attacked, and when it is too repressive to be overthrown, only then does the United States opt to contain it as best it can.
> Containment may become the U.S. policy of last resort toward Iran
> [...] must be addressed before the United States adopts the Containment policy.
On the other hand it says it's the normal practice:
> Containment has been the default U.S. policy toward Iran since the Islamic Revolution
> the constant in U.S. policy toward Iran over the past 30 years has been Containment
> Except for those moments when Washington was attempting to engage the Iranian regime, the United States typically was trying to isolate it
> Containment may also be the easiest policy option toward Iran to conceptualize, both because it is effectively what the United States has pursued for most of the past 30 years and because it would be roughly congruent with how the United States contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and has contained a host of other antipathetic regimes such as Cuba and North Korea
It is a mistake to consider Containment a policy the US has to adopt, since even the authors point it out that it was used constantly. It is the backdrop for the US to implement the rest of the policies in front of. It permeates all the actions done by the US from the first day the Islamic Revolution came to power.
And indeed it was used against all the enemies of the US! As the other book says this is the default way the US behaves when an enemy emerges: she starts doing her routinely hostile activities.