Global

In Iran, the United States confronted a regime whose spine was stiffened in part by revolutionary fervor. Military action against Cuba could encounter the same source of implacability.

Iran has threatened to attack or tax the undersea cables running through the Strait of Hormuz. No body of international law has the tools to stop it.

The Iraq war remains the standard against which US military adventurism gets measured. The Iran war may be on course to surpass it — not in US casualties, but in the breadth of its global consequences.