Chekhov’s Lesson for Tehran

Trump isn’t negotiating with Iran—he’s dismantling its regime piece by piece, leaving a hollow state with nothing left but bluster and collapse.A famous saying of Anton Chekhov’s has been making the rounds. “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall,” Chekhov advised, “in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”I wonder if the thugs and theocrats who have been plundering Iran for the last 47 years have read Chekhov. If so, I conclude that they are slow...