For thirty years the Middle East Forum has argued one unfashionable proposition: that civilizational threats are not managed, they are ended. We were told this was naïve. Then came the war, thirty-nine days of fire, in which American and Israeli power did to the Iranian war machine what three decades of “engagement” never could. The blockade closed Iran’s economy. The regime that had spent a generation threatening to shut the Strait of Hormuz could not keep its own ports open.