Anne Applebaum: “The American bombardment of Iran has been launched without explanation, without Congress, without even an attempt to build public support. Above all, it has been launched without a coherent strategy for the Iranian people, and without a plan to let them decide how to build a legitimate Iranian state…”“The absence of broader strategy fits a pattern. For decades, American presidents from both parties have oscillated between coercion and engagement with Iran, sometimes offering diplomacy, sometimes sanctions. Doves and hawks both sought to manage the tactics of the Islamic Republic—its nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missiles, its network of proxy militias throughout the Middle East—without ever coming up with a meaningful strategy to combat the root problem: the ideology of the regime itself.”