What conclusion may countries draw from this episode? Perhaps, developing nuclear weapons is essential for maintaining power. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and now Ali Khamenei cast a long shadow that other authoritarian leaders are unlikely to ignore. If, after all this, the incentives for nuclear proliferation increase, no one in the region — whether Israelis, Saudis, Iranians or Americans — will claim to be better off.

This is societal collapse at the most macro level. Looking back historians will see no good rational for the Iran War, even selfish ones, it will rather be viewed as a collapse of a pseudo-stable world order into a much more chaotic, violent and less productive paradigm where the quality of life for people on average drops sharply.