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.

As a US carrier steams toward Iran, Trump risks another disastrous neoconservative war in the Middle East. The pundits and pols who supported the Iraq war, from Joe Biden to Jeffrey Goldberg to Roger Cohen, still have not accounted for that tragic error; and they could clear their account nobly today by coming out against any war with Iran based on sad experience.