President Donald Trump should strike a killing blow at the rulers of Iran and their lackeys in October if not earlier. Press reports about the president’s alleged alteration between hawk and dove seem designed to confuse our enemy, and that is working. There is hardly a person on the planet who would presume to guess what Trump will do. “Strategic ambiguity,” meet your personification in the president.

The rump regime atop the Islamic Republic of Iran is best understood as a military junta with a through line of religious zealotry connecting its members. “Fanatics with guns and a dwindling supply of ballistic missiles and weaponized drones” is the best way to think of them. They are not scholars and political scientists with a comprehensive grasp of American and Israeli politics, though it seems as though they think of themselves as masters of those very complicated universes.