Trump’s Chance to Take the High Road With Iran

It could have been much worse.

It’s a measure of this dangerous moment that many observers felt relief on Tuesday night after the Pentagon announced that there had been no American casualties following Iran’s launch of 22 ballistic missiles at bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq. “It’s been a very long time since U.S. forces have been directly struck by ballistic missiles,” Ilan Goldenberg, a former Defense Department official who focused on Iran in the Obama administration, told me, describing the attack as “historic.”

But in the wake of last week’s killing of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, Goldenberg and other veteran Iran watchers told me, the limited damage from Iran’s response may actually present a chance for both sides to step back from the brink. Iran is clearly capable American or Iraqi deaths as of Wednesday morning. Iraq’s prime minister that Iran even provided advance warning. Though Iran’s response was uncharacteristic in that it claimed responsibility for the attack—usually it prefers to have some deniability—the country’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, seemed to offer a message of de-escalation, that Iran “took and concluded proportionate measures in self-defense.” He added: “We do not seek escalation or war.”