Our week of almost-war with Iran ended not in peace but in a tenuous, makeshift cease-fire.
Before our national attention span flits heedlessly toward impeachment, the Iowa caucuses and Megxit, it’s worth pausing to remember that the United States was on the brink of war with Iran last week.
Iran lost a top general but reaped an unexpected dividend: Iraq’s parliament, angered by U.S. missile strikes on Iraqi territory, voted to order U.S. forces to leave. The vote was nonbinding, but the Trump administration faces a new problem.By week’s end, Washington and Tehran returned to the shadow war they’ve conducted for the last 40 years: U.S.But it’s not the same old stalemate. It’s worse, for two reasons.— and eventually the rest of the Middle East.
“A U.S. withdrawal would be a major Iranian victory,” Douglas Ollivant, who worked on Iraq strategy under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, told me. “What’s happening [in Iraq] is far beyond Iranian expectations.” Iran tried to sound reasonable, too. Rouhani talked with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has tried — without success — to play the role of mediator in the past.
“The Iranians may well have decided on a strategy of regime change,” John W. Limbert, who was one of 52 American diplomats and citizens held hostage for 444 days in Iran in 1979 and 1980, told me.Iran doesn’t want to give Trump the domestic political boost he might gain from a summit meeting with one of its leaders.
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