Generals, officers, and policy staffers knocking their heads together in the office and drawing up war plans are nothing new in the Pentagon. The U.S. military has a plan for every contingency you can possibly think of, from an out-of-the-blue Russian incursion in the Baltics to an internal collapse of the Venezuelan government. So, we should all take the latest report in the New York Times about a hypothetical American military attack on Iran with this context in mind.

Mobilization plans are one thing. But acting on those plans and mobilizing for war is quite another. There are no two ways about it: A U.S. military operation in Iran absent a credible and direct national security threat to the United States, its personnel, or citizens in the region is the very definition of recklessness.