For three centuries Switzerland has been the quiet witness at the edge of Europe’s storms. It was born from the wreckage of the Thirty Years War and it learned early that survival required silence. Through Napoleon’s march, through the industrial killing fields of the First World War, through the nuclear standoff of the Cold War, Switzerland held its line. It guarded the wounded. It hosted the Geneva Conventions. It kept the channels open when enemies refused to speak. It behaved, in its own way, like one of Hemingway’s mountain sentinels, watching the world’s violence from a cold height, refusing to be drawn into the madness below. That long silence ended this month. The Swiss Federal Council has now said aloud what it once only whispered. In an interview with SonntagsZeitung, Defence Minister Martin Pfister stated with clinical clarity that “the Federal Council is of the opinion that the attack on Iran constitutes a violation of international law.” He went further, saying that “the A...