The best way to understand the US position on Iran is machismo. There’s no point looking for a strategic calculation – you won’t find it. Donald Trump and his officials have tried several explanations: regime change, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, an upcoming attack on Israel. None of them last more than a couple of days. None of them are real.

Machismo offers the only compelling explanation for what is happening here. The Trump administration, like all hard-right governments throughout history, operates on an old idea of masculinity as power. The things it likes – from executive authority to fossil fuel – are male-coded. It demands that men and women adopt traditional gender roles. It has eroded the rights of transgender people, gay men and lesbians. It worships strength and despises weakness.

No one encapsulates this vision better than “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, the pituitary moron who has unfathomably been put in charge of the armed forces. He has no qualities to speak of. He is perhaps the least complex individual ever given high office. And he therefore provides the best example of the administration’s gender-anxiety. He represents the male personality when it is extracted from anything meaningful or decent and reduced to its crudest, most insecure form.

During his time in government, he has translated his personal flaws into the operating manual for the US armed forces. Last May, he said: “Everything starts and ends with warriors, from training to the battlefield. We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns. No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses, we’re done with that shit.”

Last September, in what might........

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