As President Trump’s erratic negotiations with Iran drag on and oil prices continue to rise, the United States’ ostensible ethical justification for the war—regime change—has largely disappeared from mainstream coverage. In the Review ’s May 28 issue, Christopher de Bellaigue argues that the US and Israel’s relentless bombing campaign has mostly succeeded in strengthening the Islamic Republic:  In the war that followed, Iran gained prestige around the world by defying its exponentially more powerful foes and not merely surviving the assassinations of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other military and civilian leaders but using them to inspire loyalists.… As long as the country remains on high alert and public discourse is dominated by warnings of spies, sabotage, and treachery, the opposition will struggle to reemerge. War breeds tyrants. From 1996 until 2005 Bellaigue was a foreign correspondent for The Economist , first in Turkey and then in Iran.…