Will a humiliated Iran choose a nuclear bomb or a love bomb?

IIT WAS TYPICAL Ali Khamenei: the man who makes the final decisions in Iran didn’t want to make any. On October 27, the supreme leader gave a speech Israeli airstrikes at Iranian military facilities the previous day. It was an important moment: never before had the Jewish state openly bombed the Islamic republic, despite their decades-long shadow conflict. Yet Mr. Khamenei’s words remained muted. He promised that Israelis would come to understand Iran’s power. What that meant was for others to decide: “Our officials must be the ones to assess and understand exactly what needs to be done,” he said. It was not a call for calm, but it was not a declaration of war either.