The war with Iran has acquired a possessiveness. It is President Donald Trump’s war, in the headlines and in the polling questions, the way Vietnam eventually became Lyndon Johnson’s and Iraq became George Bush’s.

Presidents own the wars they order, and that is as it should be in a republic that holds one person accountable for the use of force. But the possessive has quietly done a second job, and that one deserves scrutiny. It has converted a threat that endangered a large part of the world into the personal project of a single American politician, and in doing so, it has let every other government that faced the same threat walk away from the bill.