"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem."

The Scriptural mandate seems appropriate given recent events in Iran: the U.S.-Israeli strikes and especially the demise of the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. When violence explodes in one area of the Middle East, the whole region can become a powder keg. And there are innocent casualties.

This is the exhausting, terrifying, maddening reality for the long-suffering persecuted Christians (and other religious minorities) in Iraq. It didn't take long for presumably Iranian proxies to launch a drone-strike attack on a Catholic Church residence in Erbil.

The residence was mostly empty — it had been evacuated in the wake of the initial strikes on Iran as a precautionary measure, as it is located very near the Erbil International Airport. But a convent was also damaged.

Now, please don't get me wrong — I am moved by the powerful images of Iranians around the world, and maybe especially in Tehran — celebrating the possibility that they will not always live under the tyranny they have suffered. And yet I cannot stop thinking of my friend Michael Ledeen, who died last year. He worked in the Reagan administration and was a longtime fellow at the........

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