Things were never expected to get to this point. Part of the implied goal of an American policy known as “maximum pressure,” with its crushing sanctions on the Iranian economy, was to force Tehran to scale back its aggression. While the Trump administration never specifically stated that the campaign aimed to curtail Iran’s military stance toward the U.S. and its allies, American officials told The Daily Beast that the White House hoped it could gain enough leverage with sanctions to deter Tehran’s military aggression. The attack that killed the contractor, the move toward U.S. bases, these were signs Iran was getting more aggressive, not less.
The president wasn’t alone in his decision to strike Soleimani. Officials across the three agencies had for months discussed Iran’s threat against the U.S. and determined that the maximum pressure campaign had not changed Tehran’s behavior, at least not militarily, according to the two U.S. officials and three other individuals with knowledge of the administration's decision-making regarding Iran. It had only bolstered Iran’s adversarial posture toward American assets in the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the world, those sources said. Behind closed doors, many U.S. officials began to question the efficacy of maximum pressure, while others pushed the president privately to go after a high-profile Iranian target.