The question wasn’t whether Iran would retaliate against the United States after President Donald Trump authorized airstrikes over the weekend against three Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan. The question was what that retaliation would look like.
The answer came Monday when Iran responded with a small, relatively restrained missile attack against the American-operated Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar that was more symbolic than threatening. The highly choreographed nature of the strike, which came only after Iran gave Qatar a heads-up about when the attack would occur and where it would send its missiles, can only be described as a concerted Iranian attempt to limit the damage to the absolute minimum. Trump seems to acknowledge what Tehran was up to, writing on Truth Social hours after the Iranian attack, “I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody was injured.”
If there was ever an opportunity to back away from the ledge and promote de-escalation between the United States and Iran, it is now. And Trump, to his credit, has done precisely that, announcing in a lengthy post on Truth Social on Monday afternoon that a ceasefire between Israel and Iran will be in full effect in 24 hours. By keeping its military action contained, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gifted Trump an off-ramp. Israel is already claiming Iran violated the ceasefire, which Iran denies. But assuming the ceasefire holds, there’s a chance of Washington and Tehran’s preventing further escalation of the situation and returning to the nuclear diplomacy the two began in April before Israel’s war against Iran cut it off.
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