1 week ago
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Alexander Ward/POLITICO:
‘No one wants to escalate things’
If the chest-beating ends, so too might the latest Middle Eastern crisis.
If the dam of silence holds, it’s possible tensions won’t flood over into more regional fighting.
“This was far from being the ‘devastating’ retaliation promised by so many in the Israeli War Cabinet,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Iran’s swift denial of any attack could well be designed to shut this door, too, but time will tell whether Iran’s proxies are folded into that equation.”
A senior unnamed Iranian official told Reuters there were no plans to retaliate, a signal that the back-and-forth strikes could end here.
When you manage a crisis into a non-story, you’ve done a hell of a job. Of course, it’s the Middle East, so it’s never over.
