In late March 2026, Sir Alex Younger, the former chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service MI6, made a striking admission to The Economist. Despite spending a career confronting the violence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, he concluded that Iran held the upper hand in its war against the United States and Israel. Among the reasons he offered was that Donald Trump had said things that confirmed what Iranians already believed — that they are fighting a civilisational war, a war of existence, while America had embarked on a war of choice. In those terms, Younger argued that asymmetry of purpose had given Iran more staying power...