The risk of the Iran war restarting is irrationally high
Neither the US nor Iran can afford this to drag on, but hubris is blinding both sides’ ability to assess the other’s readiness to fight back
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THE ancient Athenians did not really have a word for sin. They had one for error, hamartia, and they of course coined hubris – an offence of pride against the Gods, or somebody else’s honour, that was punishable as a crime.
These two terms offer an increasingly useful framework for what is happening between the US and Iran and why the risk of return to war is irrationally high.
A statement issued last week by Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei fits right in. Taken at face value, it suggests he will be even more hard-line (for which, read hubristic) than his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of this US-Israeli attempt to end the Islamic Republic.
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