Donald Trump said he was “disappointed” by Iran’s choice of Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader. The remark was vintage Trump: blunt, theatrical and heavy with the assumption that Washington still has the right to sit in judgement over the inner life of other nations. Yet the more revealing story lies elsewhere. Iran did not pause for American approval. It did not wait for a signal from Washington. Under wartime pressure, it made its decision and moved on. That is not a minor detail. It is the point.

There is a habit in Western political language, especially when it comes to countries that refuse to bend, of treating sovereignty as something conditional. Allies may exercise it freely. Rivals must somehow earn it.

There is a habit in Western political language, especially when it comes to countries that refuse to bend, of treating sovereignty as something conditional. Allies may exercise it freely. Rivals must somehow earn it.

Iran, in that view, can be pressured, sanctioned, threatened and bombed, but it is still expected to choose a future that feels acceptable to the United States. Trump’s disappointment belongs to that mindset. So did his earlier talk about who might or might not be acceptable in Tehran.

But states do not prove their sovereignty by making easy choices in quiet times. They prove it when the pressure is greatest. Iran selected a new leader in the middle of war, after the killing of the previous supreme leader and amid direct confrontation with the US and Israel. Whatever one thinks of the Islamic Republic, that........

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