“Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world,” Trump said, flanked by top administration officials including Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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But in Iran, where officials were still reeling from the U.S. killing of military commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad last week, a different story was portrayed. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a crowd in the holy city of Qom that Iran “slapped” the United States “in the face.”

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Tehran’s allies praised the move. “The Iranian strike is a great successful beginning on the path to removing American domination from the area,” Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s rebel Houthi group, said in a televised statement.

The two narratives conflict at a basic level. Iranian state media has claimed that dozens of U.S. personnel died, but the United States has said that there were no casualties. Though Iran portrays the strike as evidence of its willingness to take the fight back to the Americans, U.S. officials say they had hours of advance warning.

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In the short term, the contradictions may ease the escalating tensions surrounding the shadow war between the United States and Iran: The two powers have been engaged in conflict through proxies involving sanctions, acts of terrorism and violent harassment since Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018. Since the killing of Soleimani, it has spiraled into the light, hard to distinguish from open warfare.

But if indications from Trump and Iranian officials are to be believed, the core standoff is still unresolved, and it carries with it many long-term risks. Speaking on Wednesday, Trump said that his “maximum pressure” campaign was not only continuing but that it also would increase in intensity. The president described “additional punishing economic sanctions” that will “remain until Iran changes its behavior.”

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This unrelenting pressure will hurt the Iranian economy, though it probably will not bring the government to the negotiating table. Brian O’Toole, a former senior adviser at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control who is now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, warned that the already expansive list of sanctions means any new measures would be symbolic at best.

Iran could not afford an all-out war with the United States, and the death of Soleimani will be a major practical problem, as the charismatic leader maintained personal relationships with militias that harassed U.S. troops across the region. But to the government’s hard-line supporters, the death of the military commander merits more than just a slap.

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As martyrs, Soleimani and his slain allies may serve as powerful symbols to still-powerful proxy forces in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Some analysts warned that without Soleimani’s influence, these proxies might take even more rash actions aimed at the U.S. presence in the region.

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In Baghdad, there have been calls to avenge not only Soleimani but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a veteran Iraqi militant who was also killed in the strike early Friday. “Now it is time for the initial response to the assassination of the martyred commander Muhandis,” Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq group, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

Only hours later, sirens in Baghdad’s Green Zone blared as rockets crashed into the secure area of the Iraqi capital.

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Even as he walked away from the Iran nuclear deal, Trump has long insisted he ultimately wants a deal with Tehran. As recently as September, the president was mulling a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. “I’m a very flexible person,” he told reporters at the time.

But the president’s dealmaking influence has been tempered by the influence of advisers like Pompeo, deeply skeptical of Iran, as well as the broader political gains of taking out America’s high-profile enemies. After his speech on Wednesday, the Trump 2020 campaign ran campaign emails that praised the killing of Soleimani.

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“The Left is attacking the President for eliminating a dangerous world leader who repeatedly threatened our Nation. It’s disgusting,” the campaign email read — not noting that Trump had also made rather provocative statements about destroying Iranian cultural heritage sites.