Bangladesh, May 11 -- For more than four decades, the United States has treated Iran as a state perpetually on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. Successive administrations in Washington justified sanctions, covert operations, diplomatic isolation, and military pressure by warning that Tehrans nuclear ambitions represented an existential threat to regional and global security. Yet despite the constant rhetoric, international inspectors repeatedly failed to produce definitive evidence that Iran had decided to build an actual nuclear bomb.

Ironically, it may now be American policy itself that has transformed Irans strategic calculus.

The current crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, the collapse of regional trust in American secur...