Tuesday, however, he did openly threaten to send troops to the region—even as he denied a New York Times report, whose headline cited “echoes of [the] Iraq War,” that the administration had reviewed a contingency plan drawn up by the U.S. military, at Bolton’s directive, to send up to 120,000 troops there. (The U.S. military plans for many contingencies.) “I think it’s fake news, okay?” Trump told reporters. “Now, would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we’re not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”

Read: Pay attention to what the U.S. is doing to Iran

On the other hand, the threats that unnamed officials have described to various media outlets include missile movements, threats to ships in the Persian Gulf, and preparations among Iranian proxies to target the U.S. and its allies. Earlier this week, Iran’s regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said three of their tankers were sabotaged without naming a suspect, and a Norwegian company cited damage to one of its own tankers in the region. U.S. officials reportedly suspect Iran but have made no public accusations as of yet. These events could be taken as indications that the threats were real and the concern was warranted. At the same time, such moves would be consistent with years’ worth of Iranian activity in the region—which are precisely what U.S. officials say is part of the reason for the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign.

America’s recent moves, too, are not far out of line with past practice. Aircraft-carrier movements in the Gulf are routine, and the current deployment merely speeds up the timeline of a mission that had already been under way for a month. One Patriot anti-missile battery deployed to the region last week replaces four that were withdrawn months ago. All this is occurring as the United States is in the midst of a broader planned drawdown from the region.

“I don’t think it’s as bad as it’s being made out to be,” Ilan Goldenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who worked on Iran at the Pentagon during Barack Obama’s administration, told us. “But there’s a lot of reason to be concerned.”

He added: “If you pull back and look objectively at the assets the United States is putting into the region—one carrier that was kind of supposed to be going there anyway, one Patriot missile battery after we moved four out, four bombers—the U.S. is not going to war with Iran with that. But it’s all the hype around it, and the Bolton statement is really what set this off.”

Read: Will John Bolton bring on Armageddon—or stave it off?

North Korea circa 2017 may be a better analogy for understanding current developments than Iraq circa 2003. That summer and fall, North Korea was testing missiles and nuclear weapons, Trump was threatening fire and fury, and news reports were citing military plans and internal struggles within the Trump administration over which path to pursue. There was even an episode in which Trump said he was “sending an armada” to the Sea of Japan to deter the North Koreans, at a moment when the aircraft carrier under discussion was in fact thousands of miles away and heading in the opposite direction. In the end, Trump appeared to be using the brinkmanship as leverage to strike a deal—one that has so far eluded him. And regardless, tensions ramped down considerably and suddenly.