In Switzerland, amid the alpine calm where empires go to perfume panic as diplomacy, Iran delivered another masterclass in the ancient art of refusing to kneel. The Americans arrived with the usual imperial luggage: threats, ultimatums, sanctions theology, and that peculiar Washington habit of mistaking obedience for “peace.” Iran arrived with something far less fashionable and far more effective: leverage. Not the decorative leverage of think-tank seminars and cable-news generals, but the real kind — the kind that closes straits, terrifies markets, freezes war rooms, and forces the self-appointed masters of the universe to rediscover geography. The spectacle would be hilarious if it were not so historically obscene. For decades, Washington imagined Iran could be sanctioned into hunger, bombed into […]