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Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009, thinks that the United States’ use of force against Iran is inevitable. (Actually, he used the word “inexorable,” perhaps a sly reference to William James’s 1917 essay “Twilight of the Idols,” in which James criticized the complacency of hawkish public intellectuals.) In any event, according to the Associated Press, Hayden said that he believes Iran will “get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community.” While Hayden was heading the C.I.A., such a course of action was “way down on the list” of what he considered to be productive responses to Iranian threats, he said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. >>>