Trump's approach to Iran is muddled and unpredictable
Early Tuesday, pro-Iranian Iraqi militia members and demonstrators stormed the US Embassy compound in Baghdad after the Trump administration's airstrikes on a Iranian-backed militia on Sunday. The embassy attack, perhaps the worst crisis between Iraq and the US since 2003, reveals the inconsistency and vulnerability of the Trump administration's policies toward both Iran and Iraq.
Like a modern-day Gulliver, President Trump is metaphorically wandering around a Middle East where he'd rather not be, tied up both by smaller powers whose interests are not his own -- and by America's illusions about the region, perpetuated by Trump who somehow believes he can force Iran to bend to his will. The odds are that the situation for the US in Iraq and Iran is likely to get worse before it gets still worse.
US in a bind
The US had little choice but to respond on Sunday to recent pro-Iranian Iraqi militia attacks against US forces in Kirkuk, which claimed the life of an American contractor and wounded US forces. The Trump administration needed both to deter and signal to Tehran that such attacks were unacceptable. Failure to do so would have left the administration in violation of one of its own red lines -- that the US would not tolerate attacks against Americans.
But the US attacks in response seemed intentionally disproportionate, killing at least 25 militia and injuring scores of others . And it seems the US did not take into consideration that the airstrikes would seriously embarrass the government of Iraq or could lead to reactions like a storming of the American Embassy.
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