Rising US-Iranian tensions over the past week have seemingly brought the two sides closer to outright confrontation than at any time in the past four decades. Tehran’s vow to take revenge for the US drone strike Jan. 3 that killed the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), or Hashid Shaabi, last week in Baghdad has been met with equally bellicose statements by US President Donald Trump, who sent 3,500 additional troops to the Middle East after the assassination and promised that any Iranian action would be met with a massive US military response.

Meanwhile, rockets have been aimed in the vicinity of the Green Zone housing the US Embassy in Baghdad, and the Iraqi Council of Representatives — under pressure from Iranian-linked militia groups within the PMU — passed the first reading of legislation demanding the complete withdrawal of American forces from Baghdad.

Recognizing the risks of a conflict no one wants, some world leaders are urging caution. This plea may, for the moment, fall on deaf ears among the main protagonists. But equally, the immediate danger of war may be overblown.

Tehran will almost certainly react to the killing, but its response may not be immediate. It will likely be asymmetric, spanning a wide theater of operations than just Iraq, as some early analysis has posited, or even the wider Middle East. Iranian leaders will want to send a strong message of their own in any retaliatory moves, but they may also want a measure of plausible deniability rather than prompting a direct, full-scale conflict with US forces.