Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

July 1, 2025

The U.S. Attack on Iran Brought the Twilight War Out of the Shadows

Ending the obsession with de-escalation.

Donald Trump’s decision to have American B-2s strike Iranian nuclear facilities wasn’t the beginning of a war. Rather, it was a continuation of what H.R. McMaster describes as a “‘twilight war’ that the Islamic Republic of Iran has waged against the United States, Israel, and its Arab neighbors” since it first took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. McMaster explains that, for too long, the U.S. strategy in this war has been marked by an obsession with de-escalation:

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