Face Saving, or Head Fake?

The Media (D), and to some extent, Fox News, after the missile strike by Iran on a base in Iraq yesterday which has U.S. military forces at it, is telling the country that Iran's counter attack was a face saving move on their part. In other words, they're saying subliminally, "Look folks, Iran's Mullahs sent missiles where they wouldn't really hurt anything, or anyone in order to save face. So, now they've backed away and it's all over."

Dan Bongino on his show's broadcast today, started off with the premise that the missile strike wasn't a face saving move, but a head fake. Why? Bongino uses Lee Smith's article to explain why he agrees with Smith's remarks about the situation in the following paragraph.

Donald Trump put an end to that arrangement by commingling the dust of Soleimani together with that of one of his chief Arab lieutenants, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, head of one of Iran’s Iraqi terror proxies. Now that Trump is holding Iran accountable for the actions its proxies take in its name, the leverage gained by helping America play make-believe is gone. Iran and its allies now feel liberated to bathe publicly in the blood of Americans and warn that more violence is coming their way.

Note the phrase in the first sentence of the paragraph which says, "...put an end to that arrangement..." Bongino explained that the word "arrangement" refers to the explanation in the previous four paragraphs which opens the piece. (See link above.) So, by the fact that Pres. Trump took out both Solemani and Mahundis - the latter being the leader of the Iraqi terror group - Lee's pointing out in the rest of the paragraph that Trump's given Iran the "green light" to brag about all the proxy group actions which Iran sponsored and expose the regime for what it really is; a blood lust group of Mullahs in control of a terrorist oriented nation.

With the new "arrangement" under Pres. Trump, Lee goes on in the next paragraph to explain the problem Iran now faces.

The problem for Iran is that it isn’t actually all that powerful. For all the concern over retaliation, Trump’s trashing of the old rulebook has stripped Iran of the most important instrument in its arsenal—“plausible deniability.”

The quoted phrase in that paragraph points out that Trump, by taking out the two together,says the U.S. is no longer going to make-believe that Iran isn't the head on the snake of all past proxy attacks, from Beirut to the attack on our U.S Embassy only a week or so ago in Baghdad.

Bongino goes on to say that this head fake move is on purpose, to get the U.S. to let its guard down by backing away on hostilities, then Iran will continue to engage in "asymmetric" warfare, explained in the article by Lee, by hitting our troops in the middle-east in order to back up the Mullah's statements for demanding that all U.S. troops  completely evacuate the region.

Only time and further developments in diplomacy and actions by the other superpowers Pres. Trump called on in his remarks today to participate in dealing with Iran will reveal what comes next.