Obama Faces Resurgent Iran

Twitter can now revert to its plan to shut down its Iran services and attend to maintenance work. Twitter goes into recess pleased that it probably embarrassed a resurgent regional power. The United States government owes Twitter a grand salute for having done something where all other stratagems of war and peace failed in the past three decades.

However, Persian stories have long endings. The Iranian regime shows every sign of closing ranks and pulling its act together in the face of what it assessed to be an existential threat to the Vilayat-e faqih (rule of the clergy) system. Even if the US and Britain want to walk away from their nasty spat with Tehran, which would be an eminently sensible and logical thing to do, the latter may not allow them to do that.