In the opening pages of his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway recites the English writer John Donne’s famous poem from centuries past. “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Both works warn about the dangers of hubris. On Friday the 13th, the bell began to toll for one of the most hubristic enterprises of the modern era: the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime undone by its own overarching ambitions. Since its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic has called for the destruction of what its apparatchiks call “Great Satan” and “Little Satan” — the United States and Israel. To this end, Tehran has financed, trained, and even created wholesale a bevy of terrorist groups that target and murder Americans, Israelis, and anyone opposed to the messianic dreams of its rulers.  Henry Kissinger once asserted that Iran must decide “whether it is a nation or a cause.” But for the country’s ruling theocrats, there has never been a choice. For them, the nation is a cause. And the meaning of that cause has long been clear. The regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wanted to launch a new “Islamic epoch” with Iran at the epicenter. Calling for a “revolution without borders,” Khomeini exhorted: “We don’t recognize Iran as ours, as all Muslim countries are a part of us.”  Tehran in smoke and flames on the...