The Risk of the Iran War Restarting Is Irrationally High

The ancient Athenians didn’t really have a word for sin. They had one for error, hamartia, and they of course coined hubris — an offense of pride against the Gods, or somebody else’s honor, that was punishable as a crime. These two terms offer an increasingly useful framework for what’s happening between the US and Iran and why the risk of return to war is irrationally high.

A statement issued last week by Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei fits right in. Taken at face value, it suggests he will be even more hardline (for which, read hubristic) than his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of this US-Israeli attempt to end the Islamic Republic.