Dhaka, March 13 -- America's Iran War - or Iran's America War - reveals two important facets of how ideologically-incompatible countries behave in mutual conflict.

For America, Iran is too fragile a modern nation to survive the death of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the war. Americans believe that a theocratic state such as Iran cannot outlive the secular assassination of a leader who embodied the state's governing philosophy based on a unique and hybrid theocracy known as velayat-e faqih (or Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). That system, established after the 1979 revolution in Iran, combines democratic elements such as popular elections with divine authority but places ultimate power in t...