The dust is settling on Iran’s retaliatory missile attack on two Iraqi air bases. We are seven days into what we are told is war with Iran.

But what is it, the start of a massive, catastrophic war, or the end of one? Let’s do the math.

The Iranians, engaged in what has been business as usual for the last 40 years, had a proxy militia launch missiles at an Iraqi base a couple of weeks ago, killing an American contractor. The United States, tired of this, responded by killing 25 members of the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia that launched the missiles. Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who has overseen Iran’s exports of terrorism throughout the region for three decades, orders an attack on the U.S. embassy.

The United States kills him.

Spectacularly, with big explosions, in Baghdad, where Soleimani had just landed to personally oversee the exportation of more terror.

The entirety of the Democratic leadership in this state and in this nation lines up to condemn President Trump. There is a lot of rhetoric flying around. And some comic moments. U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III, who was not yet born when the Iranians initiated this four-decade war with the United States in 1979, calls for the repeal of the post-9/11 authorizations of military action, stating, “The U.S. Constitution explicitly grants only Congress the ability to declare war.” In addition to boning up on our recent history in the Middle East, Kennedy might want to look at his own family’s history. His great uncle, faced with communist expansion around the world and direct threats to the United States, wasn’t in the habit of asking Congress for declarations of war.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in response to the Democratic rhetoric, observes that presidents don’t require congressional authority to defend U.S. troops in the field.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who knows the region and went head to head with Soleimani in Iraq, suggests that the Soleimani hit, rather than being the start of war, may be the return of “deterrence,” even more significant than the killing of non-state actors Osama bin Laden and ISIS chief Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. He suggests that the mullahs, facing intense economic pressure since Trump restored the sanctions that Barack Obama lifted, facing civil unrest at home, and knowing they can never go toe-to-toe with the U.S. military, may have finally overplayed the one hand they have. Terrorism and proxy military action. Because Trump has made it clear he won’t hesitate to kill their top people, one by one.

It calls to mind the Iranian Hostage Crisis, which dragged on for 444 days from Nov. 4. 1979, under President Jimmy Carter’s ineffective hand-wringing leadership, and came to an abrupt halt on Jan. 20, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office.

In this latest chapter of U.S.-Iranian relations, the mullahs had a problem. We had killed their top terror-export chief, who the American media won’t stop telling us was “revered.” So revered that 56 people were trampled to death at his funeral, in a repeat of the debacles at the funerals of Yasser Arafat and Ayatollah Khomeini. The mullahs had to do something.

So they fired a dozen missiles at Iraqi air bases Tuesday night. We are told they killed no one.

And they tweeted out, “We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression.”

Translation: “We’re all done. Please don’t shoot back!’

This may not be over. There is a very good chance, following past pattern, that the Iranians may attempt large-scale terrorist actions. Like the kind that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. Like the proxy attacks that killed more than 600 American soldiers in the Iraq War. Like their long-running campaign of harassment of shipping and taking of hostages in the Persian Gulf. Like their drone attack on a Saudi oil facility in September. That means our intelligence agencies and military must remain highly alert, and ready to act. Travel in the Middle East is ill-advised. The Iranians like hostages.

But any effort to curtail the president’s ability to act in defense of American interests would be … silly. In fact, it would be providing aid and comfort to terrorists.

As their latest statement indicates, the Iranians do believe in proportionate measures. That means ones they think they can get away with.

For the moment, the mullahs don’t seem to think they can get away with much.

Not for the first time, when Trump’s opponents in partisan panic have insisted he is sparking a war, he appears to have done the opposite. Now, he’s asking all of them to line up with him to address the terrorist threat Iran has posed to the world and the authoritarian regime it has imposed on its own people for more than 40 years. Maybe it’s time to think about helping him instead of hindering him.

Boston Herald Senior Editor Jules Crittenden has reported on politics and conflict in the United States, the Balkans and the Middle East.