Trump steps back from the brink — for now
And, breathe. For a moment, at least.
“The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it,” President Donald Trump said, standing at a podium in the White House shortly after 11 a.m. on Wednesday. “The United States is ready to embrace peace,” he said, “with all who seek it.”
For the previous six days, and in particular in the hours leading up to his address, the threat of war became suffocating, and it seemed to many more likely than not that Trump could go a different way. The killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, considered the second-most powerful figure in the country — a terrorist in the eyes of the U.S. and its allies, a folk hero among Iranians — seemed destined to provoke direct conflict. The retaliation by Iran Tuesday night, launching 12 missiles at airbases in Iraq where U.S. troops are stationed, seemed for a while almost to ensure an escalation of violence.
If you were watching American cable television Tuesday night, you would have heard confident projections that Trump would strike back hard, perhaps launch a full-scale war. Amid that speculation, the president postponed an address to the nation until Wednesday morning — and many may have gone to bed dreading the prospect of the bloodshed of another Middle Eastern war. When the moment came, Trump announced that there had been no American or Iraqi casualties in the missile attack.
“Iran appears to be standing down,” Trump said, “which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a good thing for the world.”
On such moments can history turn.
Trump didn’t say that the United States would stand down, in so many words, but that was the gist of much of the speech — rather than a further military response, he’d pursue more economic sanctions, a greater NATO role in the region, further calls for the other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal to join him in withdrawing and attempting to negotiate a new one.
He was still Trump — he spent time bragging about the strength of the U.S. economy under his leadership and the size of the missiles he commands, he inaccurately portrayed the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal and badmouthed Barack Obama.
The message was not friendly: He emphasized, as the very first words of his speech and thereafter, that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons was his absolute top priority, condemned the country’s international actions in recent years, and bragged of ridding the world of its “top terrorist” in Soleimani.
But he stepped back from escalating hostilities. Opened a door, or took a door left open by Iran’s limited and ultimately bloodless response, leading toward peace. Or something closer to it. Not that this is over. While reports say Iran has indicated it plans no further official military response, it is expected Tehran may well engage in some form of cyber attack against the United States. Iran has supported many proxy military groups in the region — Soleimani’s involvement with them is a big part of why the U.S. targeted him — who might still attempt to exact revenge of their own, with or without U.S. support.
The leader of one of those proxy groups, Abu Mahdi alMuhandis, was killed in the U.S. strike alongside Soleimani.
Meanwhile, the U.S. must now navigate Iraqi sentiment as well, after that country’s parliament voted to ask all foreign troops to leave the country following the U.S. strike on Soleimani inside its borders. And the prospects for a new U.S.-Iran nuclear deal to replace the one Obama negotiated and Trump scrapped — Trump’s top stated goal in relations with the country — appear further away than before.
There will also be the matter of sorting out what happened in the crash of the Boeing 737-800 that killed 176 people, including 63 Canadians, in Tehran shortly after taking off for Ukraine early Wednesday.
Iran has recovered flight data recorders from the crash, but the New York Times reports they will not turn them over to Boeing, a U.S. company. Investigations will explore the reasons for the crash, on which no Americans were reported to be on board.
For now, many will see this sequence in Iran as a political and possibly a policy victory for Trump, in which he appears tough, eliminating a lethal enemy of the U.S. government, and appears to have escaped the possibility of being drawn into the kind of drawn-out war he’s long decried and one that would be unpopular with the American people. All of this while taking headlines away from the domestic impeachment saga.
But in the process, Trump also appears to have further destabilized the region and left the fate of U.S. allies there — including Canadians — up in the air.
He has set back efforts to prevent the nuclearization of Iran. And Trump faces a new set of domestic political controversies around his decision to strike a foreign government official in a foreign country, the intelligence it was based on, and the clumsy handling of its fallout.
In response, on Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote to limit Trump’s power to wage war against Iran without its consent.
The near future may see this situation evolve for the better, or for the worse, and the implications (political and otherwise) will follow.
Wednesday morning, a full-on war in Iran seemed to be a strong possibility, but by afternoon those who feared it may be coming could breathe a bit easier, at least for a while.