Gil Barndollar

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. President Biden may have promised that ‘America is back’, but the United States’ decades-long shadow war with Iran never left. Last month’s reciprocal strikes in Iraq and Syria, and a further 10 rockets launched at a US base in Anbar Province last week, were notable only for their normalcy. Far from being Biden’s ‘Hour One Crisis’, this kind of geopolitical hair-pulling via high explosives is all too normal in the post-Iraq War, post-Arab Spring hash of the Middle East. Two American contractors and at least one Iraqi Shia militiaman are now dead. More casualties are likely to come in the weeks ahead. This first Biden counter-strike was no more than violent messaging, perhaps primarily to a domestic audience.

The dogs of war are barking a little less loudly. While the risk of miscalculation remains, it is increasingly clear that neither the US nor Iran really wants a war in the Persian Gulf. After weeks of threats, incidents, and saber rattling, both President Trump and Iran’s leaders are slowly de-escalating. President Trump, for all his digital eruptions, clearly does not want to fight. On his trip to Japan last week Trump explicitly disavowed regime change. Last Monday, he said that Iran has ‘a chance to be a great country with the same leadership’. Trump also suggested that Japan could serve as a mediator between the US and Iran, a role that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to embrace. (Iraq has also offered to mediate).