Sparks: Middle East war live: Trump’s Iran ultimatum enters final 24 hours amid escalation fears

If a threat against power plants is the expedient path, then the calculation of civilian suffering must be the moral one, and therefore the choice reveals a nation's character.

Fear of diminished prestige and the interest in regional dominance drive this crisis, while the talk of deadlines and ceasefires serves only to decorate the true motives.

Observing this ultimatum, I find my 19th-century education in statecraft wholly inadequate for the acceleration of force that now substitutes for diplomacy.

Remember that the men who issue ultimatums and those who defy them will soon be dust, their urgent crises forgotten like those of Trajan.

From Delhi to Fez, I have observed that the ruler who confuses a show of strength for wisdom seldom maintains the loyalty of the bazaars.

It is a modest proposal to expand a threat to civilian infrastructure, for what is a bridge or a power plant but a small price for demonstrating resolve.

Observe how the fear of a deadline, like the fear of thunder, grows from a failure to understand the atomic collisions of political interest.

To 'expand a threat' is the language of an administrative memo sanitizing the promise to destroy the means of civilian life.

Strip away the word 'ultimatum' and see the simple fact: one man's declared intention to deprive countless others of light and water.

This political economy of threats illustrates how the price of a barrel of oil is weighed against the cost of a functioning hospital.

The consent for such brinkmanship is manufactured by a hegemony that presents the destruction of essential infrastructure as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

Theological differences serve as the public text for a conflict whose true text is a dispute over power, a category error I have adjudicated before.

An experiment in diplomacy that begins with a threat against bridges is an experiment that has already failed its first test of practicality.

This imbalance of fire and threat sickens the body politic as a fever sickens the human body, revealing a rupture in the cosmic order.

The ultimatum was issued with all the thoughtful finality of a host declaring that the garden party would now proceed without cucumber sandwiches.