Five months after the latest war with Iran began, it is becoming apparent that this conflict is about far more than missiles, sanctions or oil tankers. It is exposing a deeper truth about modern warfare: democratic nations often struggle to understand the strategic culture of authoritarian regimes .

Western governments have long assumed that economic hardship eventually forces political compromise. That assumption has shaped decades of sanctions policy against Iran. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that revolutionary regimes frequently value ideological survival over economic prosperity. They are often willing to impose extraordinary hardship on their own populations if doing so preserves their hold on power.

Iran is proving that lesson once again. The country’s economy has suffered severe damage. Oil exports have been constrained, inflation has accelerated, and Iran’s official currency, the rial, has lost much of its value. Ordinary Iranians are bearing the cost through rising prices, declining purchasing power and growing economic uncertainty. Yet despite these pressures, Tehran continues to prosecute the war with determination.

The conflict has also reminded the world why stability in the Persian Gulf matters. The Strait of Hormuz used to carry approximately 20 million barrels of oil every day, representing roughly 20 per cent of global oil and liquefied natural gas. Even the threat of disrupting that vital artery has sent shockwaves through international energy markets and global supply chains.

This should not surprise us. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was never designed to maximize economic growth or improve living standards. Its purpose is to preserve the Islamic Republic and defend the revolutionary ideology on which it was founded. As long as that objective remains intact, economic suffering alone is unlikely to change its strategic calculations.

This distinction is critical because successful military strategy begins with identifying an adversary’s true centre of gravity. Carl von Clausewitz, the famed 19th-century Prussian military theorist, described this as the source of an opponent’s strength and cohesion. Too often, western governments mistake economic infrastructure for political will. They assume that enough financial pain will eventually produce political moderation. Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

History offers numerous examples of authoritarian governments enduring extraordinary economic deprivation while maintaining political control. National resolve, ideological conviction and coercive state institutions can sustain a regime long after outside observers believe collapse is inevitable.

The broader lesson extends well beyond Iran. Russia has demonstrated a similar capacity to absorb sanctions while continuing its war in Ukraine. China, meanwhile, has spent decades preparing its economy, industrial base and political institutions for prolonged strategic competition with the West. These governments understand that modern conflict is not simply a contest of military power. It is equally a contest of endurance, industrial capacity and political will. That reality has been reflected in financial markets, where Brent crude briefly climbed above US$100 (C$140) per barrel as investors priced in the risk of prolonged disruption to Middle Eastern energy supplies.

For Canada and its allies, this demands a more sophisticated approach to national security. Economic sanctions remain an important policy tool, but they are rarely decisive on their own. They must form part of a broader strategy that integrates diplomacy, military deterrence, intelligence, cyber capabilities and sustained economic resilience. Perhaps the most important lesson is psychological. Democratic societies often project their own values onto their adversaries. We assume that others will calculate costs and benefits as we would. They frequently do not. Strategic success requires understanding an adversary as it understands itself, not as we wish it to be.

Wars are ultimately contests of political will. Five months into the Iran conflict, that lesson has become impossible to ignore. The battlefield has become a classroom, reminding us that wars are rarely won by economic pressure alone. They are won by accurately identifying the political, military and ideological sources of an opponent’s strength and by developing strategies that address them directly. As Canada confronts an increasingly unstable international environment, from Russia to Iran to China’s growing ambitions, that may be the most valuable lesson of all.

National Post

Five months after the latest war with Iran began, it is becoming apparent that this conflict is about far more than missiles, sanctions or oil tankers. It is exposing a deeper truth about modern warfare: democratic nations often struggle to understand the strategic culture of authoritarian regimes .

Western governments have long assumed that economic hardship eventually forces political compromise. That assumption has shaped decades of sanctions policy against Iran. Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that revolutionary regimes frequently value ideological survival over economic prosperity. They are often willing to impose extraordinary hardship on their own populations if doing so preserves their hold on power.

Iran is proving that lesson once again. The country’s economy has suffered severe damage. Oil exports have been constrained, inflation has accelerated, and Iran’s official currency, the rial, has lost much of its value. Ordinary Iranians are bearing the cost through rising prices, declining purchasing power and growing economic uncertainty. Yet despite these pressures, Tehran continues to prosecute the war with determination.

The conflict has also reminded the world why stability in the Persian Gulf matters. The Strait of Hormuz used to carry approximately 20 million barrels of oil every day, representing roughly 20 per cent of global oil and liquefied natural gas. Even the threat of disrupting that vital artery has sent shockwaves through international energy markets and global supply chains.

This should not surprise us. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was never designed to maximize economic growth or improve living standards. Its purpose is to preserve the Islamic Republic and defend the revolutionary ideology on which it was founded. As long as that objective remains intact, economic suffering alone is unlikely to change its strategic calculations.

This distinction is critical because successful military strategy begins with identifying an adversary’s true centre of gravity. Carl von Clausewitz, the famed 19th-century Prussian military theorist, described this as the source of an opponent’s strength and cohesion. Too often, western governments mistake economic infrastructure for political will. They assume that enough financial pain will eventually produce political moderation. Sometimes it does. Often it does not.

History offers numerous examples of authoritarian governments enduring extraordinary economic deprivation while maintaining political control. National resolve, ideological conviction and coercive state institutions can sustain a regime long after outside observers believe collapse is inevitable.

The broader lesson extends well beyond Iran. Russia has demonstrated a similar capacity to absorb sanctions while continuing its war in Ukraine. China, meanwhile, has spent decades preparing its economy, industrial base and political institutions for prolonged strategic competition with the West. These governments understand that modern conflict is not simply a contest of military power. It is equally a contest of endurance, industrial capacity and political will. That reality has been reflected in financial markets, where Brent crude briefly climbed above US$100 (C$140) per barrel as investors priced in the risk of prolonged disruption to Middle Eastern energy supplies.

For Canada and its allies, this demands a more sophisticated approach to national security. Economic sanctions remain an important policy tool, but they are rarely decisive on their own. They must form part of a broader strategy that integrates diplomacy, military deterrence, intelligence, cyber capabilities and sustained economic resilience. Perhaps the most important lesson is psychological. Democratic societies often project their own values onto their adversaries. We assume that others will calculate costs and benefits as we would. They frequently do not. Strategic success requires understanding an adversary as it understands itself, not as we wish it to be.

Wars are ultimately contests of political will. Five months into the Iran conflict, that lesson has become impossible to ignore. The battlefield has become a classroom, reminding us that wars are rarely won by economic pressure alone. They are won by accurately identifying the political, military and ideological sources of an opponent’s strength and by developing strategies that address them directly. As Canada confronts an increasingly unstable international environment, from Russia to Iran to China’s growing ambitions, that may be the most valuable lesson of all.

National Post

There is no specific date on which to pin the advent of the postmodern age. The term was coined in reference to painting in 1870, and first cited as a descriptor for contemporary social and cultural thought in 1939. In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published “The End of Ideology,” heralding a “post-industrial society” and laying the groundwork for postmodern thought as a guiding light in academia. Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault followed from the mid-’60s, cementing the philosophical base for postmodernism and popular derivatives like Edward Said’s postcolonial theory.

However you want to define its origins, it’s safe to say that by the 1990s postmodernism was the dominant school of thought on Western university campuses, and that by the 2000s, its students had made their way into all aspects of society, bringing postmodernism’s dogmas along with them. Between then and now, those ideas and ideologies have come to dominate our culture in virtually every aspect, from art and architecture to politics and popular culture.

But philosophies and ideologies have shelf lives. Nothing lasts forever, and while it is not an exact science, the histories of previous ages of thought suggest that postmodernism has already passed its best-before date. The Enlightenment ran for around 200 to 250 years; Romanticism took the next 100 or so years; Modernism dominated for about 70 years. In all cases, dominant social and cultural ideas were borne out of a crisis of confidence in the school of thought that immediately preceded it. The same will happen to postmodernism, too. It is inevitable.

One might convincingly argue that it is already happening. Postmodernism is so entrenched in our lives today that its origins — no matter whether we date it to 60 or 80 or 150 years ago — are becoming less and less visible. Its foundations are no longer debated in popular culture and academia; they are seen simply as common sense. Postmodern innovation and institutionalization are far behind us, and it is hard to see how our culture could become any more saturated in its ideals.

Intellectual movements are successful because they solve problems created by previous frameworks. They flounder as new questions emerge, and ultimately give way to something new when they can no longer explain the world we are living in. Whatever ideas we do retain — and there are always a few — are folded into the successor. The Enlightenment destabilized the medieval period by rejecting inherited authority, divine order and the primacy of institutions, while holding onto the basic notion that the meaning of life is intertwined with larger moral and spiritual orders. Romanticism preserved the Enlightenment’s ideas of individual dignity and its focus on freedom and creativity, but rejected an excessive fealty to calculation and rationalism.

On the timeline of popular thought, we are nearing, or have already reached, the next inflection point, the moment when the transition truly begins — when exhaustion with current dogma gives way to dissatisfaction and ultimately something new. That change is always motivated by technology, from the invention of the printing press to the atom bomb to the Internet. The rise of AI and tech-aided misinformation may very well be the next stimulant of intellectual evolution.

So what comes next?

With history as our guide, a post-postmodern framework might retain sensitivities to the notions of power and exclusion, and a recognition that institutions are not neutral players, but restore stronger concepts of objective reality and confidence in empirical science. It would still pay attention to historical contingency, the idea that history is not inevitable, while exploring the possibility of shared civic narratives and the search for meaning beyond identity categorizations as a salve to the endemic loneliness of our times. The underlying claim that power shapes social knowledge and institutions could — and should — survive, but the postmodern notion that there is no basis for shared truth and meaning would disappear as society seeks shared assumptions that lead to more stability in our lived lives. Postmodernism taught us to be skeptical of truth; its successor will seek to uncover or rediscover truths that we can all believe in.

Some things never change, though. Racism always manages to adapt to the dominant ideas of the times. Antisemitism, for example, may change in form: today, it is rooted in the postmodern framing of anti-colonialism and anti-Zionism, tomorrow it could take a more technocratic form, where AI and an increasingly networked society drive an updated hatred based on conspiracies of the Jews as an elite unto their own. If postmodernism is replaced by a widespread return to religion, antisemitism will marinate in broader theological hostilities that are ages old. In some far-right circles where postmodernism has long been rejected, this is already the case.

Israel, the Jewish state, might no longer be judged along the colonizer-colonized binary, but it could face new scrutiny that is more legalistic and institutional in nature. A post-postmodern world may very well accept Israel as a sovereign nation-state, and judge it more harshly on the level of state performance, a country like all others, and subject to the same rights and responsibilities. Seventy-five years from now, a mantra that focuses on civilizational belonging could widely celebrate Israel as a beacon for everything that is right — the revival of an ancient language, the return to ancestral homelands and the preservation of distinctive civilization — while placing new pressures on diaspora Jewry.

We have a saying for this in Canada, where it often feels like we are subject to the whims of Western dogmas, rather than active creators of it: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . As we approach the next intellectual inflection point, there is an opportunity to lead rather than follow, or at least to devise a Canadian version that makes sense to us. History may be inevitable, but our place in it does not have to be.

National Post

There is no specific date on which to pin the advent of the postmodern age. The term was coined in reference to painting in 1870, and first cited as a descriptor for contemporary social and cultural thought in 1939. In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published “The End of Ideology,” heralding a “post-industrial society” and laying the groundwork for postmodern thought as a guiding light in academia. Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault followed from the mid-’60s, cementing the philosophical base for postmodernism and popular derivatives like Edward Said’s postcolonial theory.

However you want to define its origins, it’s safe to say that by the 1990s postmodernism was the dominant school of thought on Western university campuses, and that by the 2000s, its students had made their way into all aspects of society, bringing postmodernism’s dogmas along with them. Between then and now, those ideas and ideologies have come to dominate our culture in virtually every aspect, from art and architecture to politics and popular culture.

But philosophies and ideologies have shelf lives. Nothing lasts forever, and while it is not an exact science, the histories of previous ages of thought suggest that postmodernism has already passed its best-before date. The Enlightenment ran for around 200 to 250 years; Romanticism took the next 100 or so years; Modernism dominated for about 70 years. In all cases, dominant social and cultural ideas were borne out of a crisis of confidence in the school of thought that immediately preceded it. The same will happen to postmodernism, too. It is inevitable.

One might convincingly argue that it is already happening. Postmodernism is so entrenched in our lives today that its origins — no matter whether we date it to 60 or 80 or 150 years ago — are becoming less and less visible. Its foundations are no longer debated in popular culture and academia; they are seen simply as common sense. Postmodern innovation and institutionalization are far behind us, and it is hard to see how our culture could become any more saturated in its ideals.

Intellectual movements are successful because they solve problems created by previous frameworks. They flounder as new questions emerge, and ultimately give way to something new when they can no longer explain the world we are living in. Whatever ideas we do retain — and there are always a few — are folded into the successor. The Enlightenment destabilized the medieval period by rejecting inherited authority, divine order and the primacy of institutions, while holding onto the basic notion that the meaning of life is intertwined with larger moral and spiritual orders. Romanticism preserved the Enlightenment’s ideas of individual dignity and its focus on freedom and creativity, but rejected an excessive fealty to calculation and rationalism.

On the timeline of popular thought, we are nearing, or have already reached, the next inflection point, the moment when the transition truly begins — when exhaustion with current dogma gives way to dissatisfaction and ultimately something new. That change is always motivated by technology, from the invention of the printing press to the atom bomb to the Internet. The rise of AI and tech-aided misinformation may very well be the next stimulant of intellectual evolution.

So what comes next?

With history as our guide, a post-postmodern framework might retain sensitivities to the notions of power and exclusion, and a recognition that institutions are not neutral players, but restore stronger concepts of objective reality and confidence in empirical science. It would still pay attention to historical contingency, the idea that history is not inevitable, while exploring the possibility of shared civic narratives and the search for meaning beyond identity categorizations as a salve to the endemic loneliness of our times. The underlying claim that power shapes social knowledge and institutions could — and should — survive, but the postmodern notion that there is no basis for shared truth and meaning would disappear as society seeks shared assumptions that lead to more stability in our lived lives. Postmodernism taught us to be skeptical of truth; its successor will seek to uncover or rediscover truths that we can all believe in.

Some things never change, though. Racism always manages to adapt to the dominant ideas of the times. Antisemitism, for example, may change in form: today, it is rooted in the postmodern framing of anti-colonialism and anti-Zionism, tomorrow it could take a more technocratic form, where AI and an increasingly networked society drive an updated hatred based on conspiracies of the Jews as an elite unto their own. If postmodernism is replaced by a widespread return to religion, antisemitism will marinate in broader theological hostilities that are ages old. In some far-right circles where postmodernism has long been rejected, this is already the case.

Israel, the Jewish state, might no longer be judged along the colonizer-colonized binary, but it could face new scrutiny that is more legalistic and institutional in nature. A post-postmodern world may very well accept Israel as a sovereign nation-state, and judge it more harshly on the level of state performance, a country like all others, and subject to the same rights and responsibilities. Seventy-five years from now, a mantra that focuses on civilizational belonging could widely celebrate Israel as a beacon for everything that is right — the revival of an ancient language, the return to ancestral homelands and the preservation of distinctive civilization — while placing new pressures on diaspora Jewry.

We have a saying for this in Canada, where it often feels like we are subject to the whims of Western dogmas, rather than active creators of it: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . As we approach the next intellectual inflection point, there is an opportunity to lead rather than follow, or at least to devise a Canadian version that makes sense to us. History may be inevitable, but our place in it does not have to be.

National Post

VIENNA, Austria – Was Tuesday’s Washington, D.C., funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham a requiem for an era of which Graham was a champion? The use of military force to achieve geopolitical goals is facing limits not evident even five years ago. Have the war hawks been grounded?

“Lindsey liked war, to be honest with you,” U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News on the morning of Graham’s funeral. “I jokingly say, and there’s nothing funny about it, but he’s never seen a war that he didn’t like.”

I followed the ceremonies in Washington while travelling from Warsaw to Vienna, historic capitals where history invites reflection on what it means to be the victim of imperial forces, and the limits of imperial power.

(Summertime trivia for those who like geography questions: how many sovereign countries have capital cities beginning with W in their own languages? Five: Washington, Warsaw, Wien (Vienna), Wellington and Windhoek, Namibia.)

Another W question, put to music back in 1970: “War, what is it good for?” Several important things, actually, beginning with defending sovereignty, liberty and justice. Not always, though, as war can be used for conquest, oppression and injustice. And war always brings suffering, destruction and death.

Another question: What if even a war with just goals doesn’t work? Then what is it good for?

Graham’s funeral brought two wartime leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to Washington. Two wars, two continents, two Oval Office meetings, but one common theme: the limits of pure military force are becoming evident.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was launched on the premise that the relative balance of armed forces greatly favoured the larger invader. Moscow did not count on the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance and, while it claimed territory in the east, Russian military force was simply not capable to seizing the centre of the country. Rapid technological transformations have turned the war moderately toward Ukraine, though Russia is still able to send missiles into residential neighbourhoods, which used to be recognized as a war crime.

Between 2014, when Russia seized and annexed Crimea without much effort, and 2026, the limits of military power have become more evident. Graham, the last of the soaring war hawks, died just as that new reality was dawning, not only in Ukraine (to his delight), but also Gaza and Iran (to his dismay).

After the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 2023, Netanyahu launched a crushing operation in Gaza, defending it against accusations of “war crimes” on the grounds that Hamas had deliberately embedded its fighting forces among civilians. The Israel Defence Forces, with total control of Gaza’s borders, absolute control of Gaza’s airspace and the ability to send ground troops wherever it wished in the tiny territory, had no limit on its power and reduced wide swaths to rubble.

Nevertheless, after two years of pulverization , when the ceasefire was declared in October 2025, Hamas was still in power in Gaza, with effective control of the territory not under direct IDF occupation. If the might of the IDF could not eliminate Hamas after two years of intense fighting in Gaza, it may well be that sheer might is not mighty enough.

In Iran, Trump infamously threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” There is no doubt that American-Israeli air strikes could eliminate all of Iran’s bridges, major roads, ports, electrical grid and refineries. Hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed and millions more could die from disease, hunger and lack of water access. That hasn’t happened because those would be clear war crimes.

Yet it also hasn’t happened because it is not clear that it would achieve the military objective. Set aside the evidently false claim that Iran was “weeks away” from a nuclear bomb — the nuclear program was already “obliterated” in last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer, according to Trump — the war is now about opening the Strait of Hormuz and protecting America’s allies from lesser, but real, damage from Iran.

Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan used naval power to keep Hormuz open nearly 40 years ago when Iran tried to close it at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. The original “peace through strength” president succeeded and it stayed open for four decades until Trump began his war. But Reagan did not have to worry about Iran’s missile and drone arsenal — or the Houthis using the same to cut off Red Sea access to the Arabian Sea.

It is not evident that even the pulverization of Iran — an enormous territory of over 90-million people — could put an end to attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, as well as attacks on ports, airports, refineries and desalination plans.

Consider Kuwait, which hosts a massive American military presence. It would be impossible now for any neighbour to invade it as Iraq did in 1990. But Iran needn’t invade. Kuwait gets 90 per cent of its drinking water from desalination, and Iran has hit its facilities, though they have been repaired. What if they were taken out? Kuwait exports all its oil — two-million barrels daily — through Hormuz. Iran has largely closed it for months.

Similar, though less severe, situations prevail in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Hence Trump and Netanyahu’s conundrum. They have the force. But force may no longer be enough, even against a much weaker rival.

Their military power is formidable. War has changed. After Gaza and Iran, even as the late senator Graham was buried, it may be that the flight of the hawks has ended.

National Post

• Raymond J. de Souza: Lindsey Graham fought for Ukraine to his dying breath
• Opinion: Canada cannot trade away the danger of a Russia-China alliance

VIENNA, Austria – Was Tuesday’s Washington, D.C., funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham a requiem for an era of which Graham was a champion? The use of military force to achieve geopolitical goals is facing limits not evident even five years ago. Have the war hawks been grounded?

“Lindsey liked war, to be honest with you,” U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News on the morning of Graham’s funeral. “I jokingly say, and there’s nothing funny about it, but he’s never seen a war that he didn’t like.”

I followed the ceremonies in Washington while travelling from Warsaw to Vienna, historic capitals where history invites reflection on what it means to be the victim of imperial forces, and the limits of imperial power.

(Summertime trivia for those who like geography questions: how many sovereign countries have capital cities beginning with W in their own languages? Five: Washington, Warsaw, Wien (Vienna), Wellington and Windhoek, Namibia.)

Another W question, put to music back in 1970: “War, what is it good for?” Several important things, actually, beginning with defending sovereignty, liberty and justice. Not always, though, as war can be used for conquest, oppression and injustice. And war always brings suffering, destruction and death.

Another question: What if even a war with just goals doesn’t work? Then what is it good for?

Graham’s funeral brought two wartime leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to Washington. Two wars, two continents, two Oval Office meetings, but one common theme: the limits of pure military force are becoming evident.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was launched on the premise that the relative balance of armed forces greatly favoured the larger invader. Moscow did not count on the bravery of the Ukrainian resistance and, while it claimed territory in the east, Russian military force was simply not capable to seizing the centre of the country. Rapid technological transformations have turned the war moderately toward Ukraine, though Russia is still able to send missiles into residential neighbourhoods, which used to be recognized as a war crime.

Between 2014, when Russia seized and annexed Crimea without much effort, and 2026, the limits of military power have become more evident. Graham, the last of the soaring war hawks, died just as that new reality was dawning, not only in Ukraine (to his delight), but also Gaza and Iran (to his dismay).

After the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 2023, Netanyahu launched a crushing operation in Gaza, defending it against accusations of “war crimes” on the grounds that Hamas had deliberately embedded its fighting forces among civilians. The Israel Defence Forces, with total control of Gaza’s borders, absolute control of Gaza’s airspace and the ability to send ground troops wherever it wished in the tiny territory, had no limit on its power and reduced wide swaths to rubble.

Nevertheless, after two years of pulverization , when the ceasefire was declared in October 2025, Hamas was still in power in Gaza, with effective control of the territory not under direct IDF occupation. If the might of the IDF could not eliminate Hamas after two years of intense fighting in Gaza, it may well be that sheer might is not mighty enough.

In Iran, Trump infamously threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” There is no doubt that American-Israeli air strikes could eliminate all of Iran’s bridges, major roads, ports, electrical grid and refineries. Hundreds of thousands of civilians could be killed and millions more could die from disease, hunger and lack of water access. That hasn’t happened because those would be clear war crimes.

Yet it also hasn’t happened because it is not clear that it would achieve the military objective. Set aside the evidently false claim that Iran was “weeks away” from a nuclear bomb — the nuclear program was already “obliterated” in last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer, according to Trump — the war is now about opening the Strait of Hormuz and protecting America’s allies from lesser, but real, damage from Iran.

Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan used naval power to keep Hormuz open nearly 40 years ago when Iran tried to close it at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. The original “peace through strength” president succeeded and it stayed open for four decades until Trump began his war. But Reagan did not have to worry about Iran’s missile and drone arsenal — or the Houthis using the same to cut off Red Sea access to the Arabian Sea.

It is not evident that even the pulverization of Iran — an enormous territory of over 90-million people — could put an end to attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, as well as attacks on ports, airports, refineries and desalination plans.

Consider Kuwait, which hosts a massive American military presence. It would be impossible now for any neighbour to invade it as Iraq did in 1990. But Iran needn’t invade. Kuwait gets 90 per cent of its drinking water from desalination, and Iran has hit its facilities, though they have been repaired. What if they were taken out? Kuwait exports all its oil — two-million barrels daily — through Hormuz. Iran has largely closed it for months.

Similar, though less severe, situations prevail in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Hence Trump and Netanyahu’s conundrum. They have the force. But force may no longer be enough, even against a much weaker rival.

Their military power is formidable. War has changed. After Gaza and Iran, even as the late senator Graham was buried, it may be that the flight of the hawks has ended.

National Post

• Raymond J. de Souza: Lindsey Graham fought for Ukraine to his dying breath
• Opinion: Canada cannot trade away the danger of a Russia-China alliance