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close to deploying a weapons system
capable of reaching Israel. Israel claimed
no responsibility for the strike. Top U.S.
military leaders warned that it could in-
cite attacks on Americans, but Trump
aides assured Israel that the White
House had no objections. Similar bomb-
ings followed—though it was not al-
ways clear by whom—and Shia militia
leaders threatened to retaliate against
U.S. forces stationed at bases in Iraq. In
late August, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis,
a leader of the P.M.F., said, of the U.S.,
“We will hold them responsible for
whatever happens from today onward.”
By the summer’s end, Israeli leaders
were issuing specific warnings to Sulei-
mani. Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign
minister, told Ynet, a popular news site,
“Israel is acting to strike the head of the
Iranian snake and uproot its teeth. Iran
is the head of the snake, and Qassem
Suleimani, the commander of the Rev-
olutionary Guards Quds Force, is the
snake’s teeth.” In some cases, Israel
seemed to be sending messages that
would be understood only by Suleimani
and his close associates. In August, on a
popular radio show on Tel Aviv’s FM 103,
Olmert was asked if Israel had ever tried
to kill Suleimani. He gave a veiled an-
swer, apparently referring to the killing
of Mughniyeh, a decade earlier. “There
is something that he knows, that he
knows that I know,” Olmert replied. “I
know that he knows, and both of us
know what that something is.” After a
moment, he added, “What that is, that’s
another story.” The threats were meant
to remind Suleimani of Israel’s far reach.
Trump, though, showed signs that
he was still hoping to negotiate with
Iran. In September, he fired Bolton, the
most prominent hawk in the White
House. When Iranian drones attacked
oil-processing facilities in Saudi Ara-
bia, disrupting five per cent of the world’s
oil supply, U.S. intelligence blamed Iran,
and Netanyahu and other U.S. allies in
the region assumed that Trump would
retaliate—he did not.
On September 24th, at the U.N. Gen-
eral Assembly, President Emmanuel
Macron, of France, tried to arrange a
three-way phone call with President
Rouhani and Trump. Rouhani, who
had belittled the value of “photo op” di-
plomacy, declined to participate. Net-
anyahu believed that if Trump entered
into talks with Iran he would “lose the
pressure of the sanctions,” an Israeli
diplomat said.
In the fall, Suleimani’s militias in
Iraq mounted some of their most bra-
zen rocket attacks yet. They fired at
bases in Iraq that housed U.S. forces—
first on the outskirts of the bases and
then closer to U.S. personnel. Israel let
it be known that it was prepared to be-
come more aggressive against the Quds
Force. “The rules have changed,” the
Israeli Defense Minister, Naftali Ben-
nett, said in a statement. “Our message
to Iran’s leaders is simple: You are no
longer immune. Wherever you stretch
your tentacles, we will hack them off.”
By December, Iranian-backed prox-
ies were firing larger, more powerful
rockets at the bases. On December 4th,
Pompeo met with Netanyahu, in Por-
tugal, and received assurances that the
U.S. would retaliate against Iran if any
Americans were hurt. Pompeo pri-
vately remarked, “The Israelis want
to get their big buddies into the fight
for them.”
In Israel, nobody in military and in-
telligence circles expected Suleimani to
relent. A crisis appeared inevitable. “We
have been delaying them, but the clock
is running out,” a former Mossad officer
said, in Tel Aviv. “War is coming. It will
happen. The question is when and on
what scale.”O
n December 27th, after weeks of
attacks, a barrage of thirty rockets
hit a base in northern Iraq, injuring sev-
eral soldiers and killing an American
civilian contractor, Nawres Hamid, a
thirty-three-year-old Iraqi-American
who worked as an Arabic interpreter.
“They’d intended to do far more harm,”
a defense official said. In response, Gen-
eral Kenneth McKenzie, of Central
Command, sent a range of options to
General Mark Milley, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
One of the options, which was pre-
sented to Trump, was calculated to kill
a limited number of members of an Ira-
nian-backed militia known as Kataib
Hezbollah. But Trump chose a more
punishing route. On December 29th,
the U.S. launched air strikes on five
militia sites in Iraq and Syria, killing
twenty-five members of the group and
wounding more than fifty. The U.S.military believed that the air strikes
would arrest the cycle of violence. In-
stead, they touched off a surge of anti-
American sentiment in Iraq. On New
Year’s Eve, after a funeral for the vic-
tims of the strikes, supporters of Kataib
Hezbollah marched on the American
Embassy compound in Baghdad, set-
ting fire to the reception area and forc-
ing security personnel to retreat into
the compound. The Embassy was never
overrun, but the images from Baghdad
were reminiscent of those from the
Benghazi attack. (U.S. intelligence came
to believe that the organizers had in-
tended a limited show of protest, and
that it had grown out of control.) In a
tweet, Trump blamed Iran, saying, “They
will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is
not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy
New Year!” On Fox News, Pompeo said
that the Kataib Hezbollah supporters
had been “directed to go to the Em-
bassy by Qassem Suleimani.”
As the Embassy siege unfolded,
Trump was at Mar-a-Lago, where Mil-
ley and Mark Esper, the Secretary of
Defense, presented him with slides
that outlined possible responses. One
slide described another round of air
strikes on militia bases and other tar-
gets. The next laid out more impromptu
options—a range of targeted killings
that commanders did not expect to re-
ceive serious consideration. It showed
three photographs—two of obscure
local militia commanders and one of
Suleimani. Though Suleimani had a
position in the Iranian government,
the U.S. defense official said, he could
be legally killed because he was “dual-
hatted”—he also directed proxies in
Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen,
which, as non-state actors, were legit-
imate terrorist targets. The U.S. had
been tracking Suleimani’s movements
since long before there was any thought
of targeting him, assembling a record
that the military calls a “pattern of life.”
Intelligence officials told Trump that
Suleimani was planning attacks that
had the potential to kill hundreds of
Americans in the region, though pre-
cise details were unknown. The C.I.A.
director, Gina Haspel, told Trump that
Iran was unlikely to respond to Sulei-
mani’s death with large-scale retaliation,
and that more Americans were at risk
of being killed in attacks that Suleimani