The four drivers of the Iran War: Rhetoric, miscalculation, hubris, and two conflicting clocks

The United States and Israel did not stumble into war with Iran. They were driven into it — by the relentless drumbeat of political rhetoric, by catastrophic miscalculation, by the outsized egos of two narcissistic leaders who fancied themselves military geniuses, and by two clocks ticking to entirely different rhythms. Understanding these four drivers is not an academic exercise. It is an autopsy of a war foretold as a disaster. I. Rhetoric: The Art of the Gaslight Wars are rarely declared; they are narrated into existence. Trump and Netanyahu proved masters of this dark art. For months before the first bomb fell, they conducted a relentless rhetorical campaign, painting Iran as an existential threat on the cusp of acquiring a […]