Trump is fighting a ‘Boomer war’ in Iran: a relic unpopular with anyone under 60

To see this war as archaic, the last squawk of the Middle East hawks, is at once maddening and hopeful

From the moment the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the news seemed incongruous with the year 2026. A war to kill the Ayatollah and overthrow the government - this was the fantasy of neoconservatives after September 11, before today's college students were born. Hadn't every president since, Donald Trump most boisterously of all, repudiated regime-change wars in the Middle East?

When he announced the strikes in an overnight video, decked out in a USA ballcap, Trump evoked an even more distant era. The president barely bothered to claim that Tehran posed some kind of imminent threat. Instead, he recited the litany of misdeeds perpetrated by the Islamic Republic since it took power in 1979.