What Iran is really trying to do to Donald Trump tonight

| 9:50 pm EST January 7, 2020
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Tonight has been chaotic and disturbing to say the least. Iran has fired missiles at a military base in Iraq which houses U.S. troops. The government of Iran has been claiming all evening that it killed thirty U.S. troops in the attack, but there’s no way it could know that, and no news outlets are giving any credence to this. Instead, the U.S. government is stating that no U.S. troops have been killed, while an unknown number of Iraqi troops have been killed. Iran is also publicly threatening to attack the city of Dubai, if the United States launches a retaliatory attack from its base in the United Arab Emirates.

So what’s going on here? It’s probably not mere happenstance that none of the deaths at the Iraqi base were U.S. troops. With ballistic missiles you can be really specific in your targeting. The missiles hit a housing complex, which is an easy way to make sure you’re hitting the specific troops you want to hit. In other words, Iran was apparently trying to kill Iraqi troops while avoiding killing U.S. troops.

Based on what’s transpired so far, it looks like Iran is attacking (or threatening to attack) any country in the region that dares to offer any military assistance to the United States. The attack on the Iraqi soldiers is an attempt at pressuring Iraq into making good on its threat to expel U.S. troops from the country. The threat against Dubai is an attempt at pressuring UAE into pressuring the U.S. not to carry out retaliatory attacks. In other words, Iran is trying to isolate the U.S. in the region, and ultimately force Trump to pull the U.S. out of the region.

This is, of course, all about Donald Trump. By attacking everyone who stands near the U.S., but not actually attacking the U.S., Iran is making it difficult for Trump to come up with an excuse to fire back. This means Trump has to sit there and look weak, while Iran dictates the terms in the region. It’s actually a pretty smart strategy. The trouble is, these things can always go horribly wrong, and often do.