During Israel’s invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956-1957, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did not hesitate to defy domestic political pressures and censure Israel at the United Nations, withdraw agricultural aid, and threaten financial sanctions that put “Israel’s life… at stake.” Those measures worked to end an Israeli occupation and restrain Israeli attacks on civilians, and gave Washington prestige across the global south. The U.S. political mood changed swiftly after the ’67 war. But it could change back again in the wake of apartheid reports.

In ’56 the British overreached tragically in Suez, the U.S. punished the pound, a Prime Minister fell, and an Empire ended. John Bolton is exhibiting the same hubris about regime change in Iran, and using economic leverage to do so, but the gambit may not work out well for the American empire, Helena Cobban writes.

Louise Diamond writes that in evaluating what happened to make a Muslim major apparently take…