John Bolton is gone from the White House, yet war with Iran is suddenly imminent. I had begun to believe irony was dead.

“[Bolton] calls for the preemptive bombing of Iran with dreary regularity during his many Fox News appearances,” I wrote after he became Donald Trump’s national security adviser in March of 2018, “and has labored for years to arrange the proper set of circumstances that would allow Tehran to be rendered into a pile of rubble.”

I was actually foolish enough to indulge in a brief moment of optimism after Bolton was unceremoniously shown the door last week. There was talk of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo taking on Bolton’s role like…