[Today’s Iran war post launched before finished because reasons. Please return at 8:00 AM EDT for a final version]

I often cite one of my favorite lines from all of literature, by Marguerite Yourcenar in The Memoirs of Hadrian: “I begin to discern the profile of my death.” Admittedly, her fictional Hadrian did not have a sense of dread but of inevitability. Now, many of the commentators following the epically stupid Iran war, which has revived the Saudi-Ansar Allah conflict, exhibit frustration and gloom at what looks to be a new and potentially culminating round in a disastrous game of chicken. Netanyahu has reportedly amping up Trump to pound Iran again, sooner rather than post-midterms, although we’ll see if those rumors are accurate. But Iran appears to believe them, or at least see danger in not believing them.…