I was off by three days. I had formally predicted — if the time stamp on an email counts as formality — that the bombing of Iran would commence on Tuesday, with the first strikes scripted to occur just as Donald Trump was inflicting his State of the Union address on us. He could then pivot to a carefully choreographed off-script moment, bathing himself in glory to the thunderous seal-clapping of his Republican congressional courtiers.
I had assumed that the obvious theatricality of such timing would be irresistible. It might have been the first occasion that anyone has ever overestimated Trump’s capacity for vulgar showmanship. The precise timing of the attack, however, does not matter in the long run so much as why, and what happens next.
