What Comes Next Between Iran and the United States

Credit: White House/Instagram

I spoke to my guest today, Ilan Goldenberg, just a couple hours after Donald Trump addressed the nation following an Iranian missile attack on bases in Iraq. The Iranian attack, of course, was in retaliation to a US drone strike that killed a top Iranian official Qassem Souleimani on January third.

In his remarks, Donald Trump signaled that he was ready for the offramp and would not launch new military strikes in the near term. The Iranian government also said that the missile attacks on bases in Iraq had concluded their retaliation.

For the moment, the crisis is not poised to escalate. But, says Ilan Goldenberg, we can very much expect Iran to launch further reprisals in the future -- and this could include terrorist attacks and assassination attempts against US targets.

Ilan Goldenberg is a former Defense Department official in the Obama administration whose work focused on Iran. He is now director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New…