Trump’s Iran Policy Spirals Toward Control

The U.S. airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, was not simply a sharp departure in the Trump administration’s policy toward Tehran. It also marks a larger shift in America’s response to Iranian influence and provocations in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has gambled that an extraordinary escalation will allow it to reassert control of an intensifying U.S.-Iran confrontation. It may actually work. But weathering the diplomatic and military fallout will require far greater skill and competence than Trump’s team has displayed so far.

The political scientist Robert Jervis once distinguished between the “spiral model” and the “deterrence model” of conflict. In the spiral model, hitting an opponent simply causes him to hit you back; escalation begets escalation. In the deterrence model, hitting an opponent hard enough leads him to back down; escalation, or simply a show of strength, can beget de-escalation.