Imagine, a man walks into a boxing ring, hits his opponent with everything he has, and then expresses genuine surprise when the opponent does not fall down. Now imagine that man doing this for 47 years. Congratulations. You now understand American and Israeli policy towards Iran. A nation forged in sanctions, steeled in sacrifice, and led by men who do not hide. On the morning of February 28, 2025, in the blessed month of Ramadan, Baby Nethanyahu and Donald J. Trump finally got their man. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was martyred. So, too, were members of his family. Yet killing a foreign head of state in broad daylight was only the opening act. The curtain rose again on bombs falling over an elementary school in Minab. Twice. Leaving One hundred and sixty children dead. The first bombs silenced their morning. The second buried their memory. The West had drawn up a script. Iran declined to read it. What followed was a rather firm reply: hundreds of missiles, thousands of drones, and a sudden awareness that maps of the Gulf had not been consulted. Since then, the conflict has done what conflicts do best: spread. Civilians have died by the thousand. Oil infrastructure now resembles modern art. Haifa’s refineries are smoked. Civilians on all sides have paid a price no geopolitical analysis can fully account for. And in the skies, three F-15s and an F-35, the supposedly untouchable jet, now touched.

What the architects of maximum pressure have consistently failed to apprehend is that the Islamic Republic does not operate on the brittle logic of personality-centric rule. When Dr. Ali Larijani, who was not only the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council........

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