As the Iran conflict picks back up after a brief lull, the Trump administration is weighing whether to make major concessions to de-escalate or, more likely, pursue one of a series of escalatory options that would invite further Iranian retaliation, potentially reviving the regionwide conflict seen in March. On July 28-29, a brief period of relative calm in the Middle East began to unravel as Iran and its proxies launched attacks on U.S. forces in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, while the United States conducted airstrikes on Iranian-linked targets inside Iraq, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening once more to escalate in response to the Jordan attack. This followed days of restraint from the United States, after it demurred on July 27 from extending its nearly two-week-long campaign of daily attacks against Iran, spurring an end to Iranian counter-attacks against Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain that had plagued the region since the...
