NaG Director Faysal Itani quoted in article on Qassem Soleimani’s death:
“We killed Soleimani to establish deterrence and impose some sort of escalation dominance on Iran—that we are willing to go farther in this cycle than they are—because it had obviously crossed a number of red lines in recent months. Clearly Iran has to respond,” Faysal Itani, a deputy director at the Newlines Institute, told me. For months, Iran-backed militias in Iraq had been launching rockets toward U.S. troops, until an attack on December 27 killed an American contractor. After Trump responded with strikes that killed militiamen, and Iran-backed protesters attempted to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Trump ordered the strike on Soleimani. Itani said that if Tuesday’s missile attacks are the extent of Iran’s retaliation for its commander’s death, there’s no need for America to respond. “The U.S. hit them harder than they hit it, and deterrence is in place,” he said. “My fear is that Trump may not see it that way, and may choose to escalate yet again.”
Read the full article at the Atlantic.
