Generals always prepare to fight the last war. So do armchair generals. Most commentators on the American-Israeli war with Iran see the conflict through the prism of the War on Terror. We are told that the war is “neoconservative,” but also that it is the end of neoconservatism. We are told that this is Israel’s war, with Israel and American Jews leading President Donald Trump by the nose, but also that it is President Donald Trump’s war, a grudge match born from vanity and animus. We are told that the war means the end of Trumpism, but also that it confirms Trumpism as America’s default foreign policy. Even the administration speculates aloud, as though it too is a passive spectator.

When Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister in World War I, cited that adage about the generals, he added: “especially if they won it.” The same goes for the armchair generals who lost it after 2001. The waste and failure of the War on Terror should make anyone think twice about “boots on the ground.” But Iran’s war on America began in 1979, long before the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror. And if neoconservatism means nation-building and exporting liberal democracy rather than “American Jews in public life,” then neoconservatism is long gone. It withered in the face of reality between 2007, when the second........

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