President Trump said Iran warned the U.S. before its missile strike Monday on an American air base in Qatar.
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“I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured,” Trump wrote on social media.
The president expressed hope that the missile would be the end of Iranian retaliation for U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
“Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE,” he said.
And the attack wasn’t Iran’s first time launching missiles at a U.S. base, nor was it the first time the Iranian government gave the U.S. a heads-up about an incoming attack.
Political analyst Rick Mulaney said that while it may be a little unusual for that warning to occur, he notes that the development was a repeat of what occurred in 2020 when President Trump took out Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani.
“One of the concerns at the time was that Trump was criticized for his actions in taking out that general and targeting him, which was that it would invite a provocative response from Iran,” Mulaney said. “Instead, they did in 2020 what they did today. They gave advanced warning, and there were no casualties. It helped de-escalate what happened.”
Mulaney added that the retaliation from Iran seemed to be more of a symbolic gesture to show their people that they are not backing down from the conflict.
“The primary audience for what they did today was the domestic audience, and they had to have a response,” he said. “They had to retaliate in some fashion. They had to do it in a way that doesn’t provoke the United States into a full-blown war.”
Furthermore, one topic that has repeatedly come up following the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is regime change, to which Mulaney says is not necessarily the objective of the United States.
“In terms of regime change, President Trump kind of tweeted that it was a possibility, but that is not the objective of the US,” Mulaney noted. [RICK] “One thing that history has taught us is that regime change is risky, [which] we’ve seen in several places.”
De-escalation is critical because if things continue to heat up, we could see a destabilization throughout the Middle East, something that could also lead to higher prices at the gas pump in the US.