On June 28, 1914, a nineteen-year-old with a pistol shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Six weeks later, the world was at war. The assassination did not cause the war by itself. The global system was already under stress , militarized alliances, imperial rivalries, wounded nationalisms all coiled together like a spring. The bullet was just the release mechanism. When the United States and Israel killed Iran's Supreme Leader, they may have pulled a trigger in a world that is, once again, already coiled.