The U.S. Is Walking Into Iran’s Escalation Trap

“I feel like a jackass caught in a Texas hailstorm -- I can’t run, I can’t hide and I can’t make it stop.” U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s desperate comment to aide, Bill Moyers, came after a massive and sustained aerial bombing campaign in North Vietnam -- codenamed ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ -- had failed in its aim of pressuring the North Vietnamese leadership into peace talks to end the spiralling conflict that became the 19-year Vietnam War. Shortly after, on 8 March 1965, following advice…