The loudest criticism of America’s recent strike on Iran has focused on its legality.

Members of Congress and foreign leaders alike have rushed to condemn the action as unprovoked and a violation of international law. Sen. Bernie Sanders called it an illegal war. Sen. Elizabeth Warren described it as dangerous and unlawful. Sen. Ed Markey labeled it unconstitutional. California Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed the charge.

Internationally, Spain, Norway, the European Union and the United Nations issued familiar calls for restraint and legal process.

The common premise behind these objections is that the strike was unjustified because there was no immediate – i.e., "imminent" – threat. That premise is wrong.

US hostilities with Iran actually began decades ago

It rests on a dangerously narrow understanding of both law and history, one that treats Iran’s nearly five-decade campaign against the United States as irrelevant unless it fits into a 24-hour window of “imminence.” That framework may be politically convenient. It is not strategically serious.

Iran’s war against the United States did not begin last week or last year. It began in 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days.

That act was not an aberration. It was the opening move in a pattern that has defined Iran’s behavior ever since: the........

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