What's so hard about understanding the Iran war

Iran was building a rapidly expanding ballistic missile force capable of striking every major city in Europe—including London. For decades it pursued nuclear weapons and stood on the threshold of producing them in significant numbers. Once those two programs matured, Iran would hold the Middle East—and the oil that powers the modern industrial world—in a vise. Like North Korea, it would become untouchable.

The regime had repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel from the map. It calls America the “Great Satan” and makes no secret that we are next. Its leaders are driven by an apocalyptic Shia ideology that awaits the return of the Twelfth Imam and the Mahdi—an end-times figure whose arrival, in their view, requires the destruction of those who reject their faith.

I wish some other nation or coalition would share the burden of policing this threat. Europe may finally be stirring, but we could no longer wait. The United States had to act. The costs are real. They are still far smaller than the price of a nuclear-armed Iran able to deliver warheads across half the globe—and, eventually, into our own backyard.