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1. Thread: My take on Iran/Trump, which I may regret in just a few days, but anyway: Trump doesn’t want war with Iran, as today’s NYT & Reuters reports underscore. Trump sees Middle East wars against anyone other than ISIS/AQ as a waste of good American $ on brown people far away
2. Iran gets this. Iran is smart. It sees straight through Trump’s bullshit, as it did Obama’s. The Iranians are very astute readers of the region, and also understand Washington better, frankly, than many Washington pundits
3. So Iran knows it can safely raise the heat, blow up some tankers here, a Saudi airport & pipeline there, some rockets at compounds in Iraq, Israelis on the Golan. These are designed to make plain just how much trouble they can cause if anyone does ever come at them for real
4. The drone downing was, obviously, a greater risk, but once again Qassem Soleimani’s read proved correct. Even if Trump had let the strikes happen, what would it cost Iran? A few radars & missiles. Soleimani doesn’t lose sleep over this. He sleeps better than Trump, I’m sure
5. Would Iran have ‘inevitably’ been ‘forced’ to retaliate fiercely to these strikes? Well, in May 2018, Israel hit dozens of Iranian targets in Syria in a single day, reportedly powdering almost every site they had: a far more strategic loss for Tehran than some radar towers
6. Did Soleimani launch all-out war on Israel as a result? Did he hell. He licked his wounds, and went back to the drawing board. Again, he’s smart. A hot war against the Lesser Satan doesn’t work for him. Much less one against the Greater Satan. Where does this leave us then?
7. A tense situation, which may get out of hand, but probably won’t. Tehran will keep flexing. Trump will keep bullshitting, till something else distracts him. Even if he does end up launching some sort of strike, it’ll be limited, and won’t lead to another 2003. والله أعلم
