New Delhi, Feb. 26 -- AFTER two months of presidential threats, amid the largest air and naval build-up in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Americans might have expected Donald Trump to make the case for what may be an imminent conflict with Iran. Yet his state-of-the-union address on February 24th devoted just a few minutes to the subject. Not only that, he said Iran could avoid a fight if it simply uttered "those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon".

Never mind that Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, has said those words many times before. They were even in the preamble to the nuclear deal Iran signed in 2015-the one Mr Trump tore up three years later. The president simply wants to hear them again, ...