Trump orders new airstrikes on Iran after deadly attack on U.S. troops in Jordan

Two Americans are dead in Jordan and the response, apparently, is more airstrikes on Iran. Good. That is the correct order of operations. You do not send a strongly worded statement when American troops come home in flag-draped coffins. You send fighter jets.

For years the foreign policy set in Washington has treated Iranian proxy attacks as background noise, the cost of doing business in the region. Rockets hit a base, everyone issues a statement, and the mullahs learn that killing Americans carries no real price. That calculation only changes when it stops being true. If this strike is what the early reporting suggests, a direct answer to a direct killing, then it is the kind of deterrence that should have been standard practice a long time ago.

None of this means the details won't matter enormously in the coming days. Who exactly was hit, whether it actually degrades Iran's proxy network or just resets the clock until the next attack, whether Tehran escalates rather than backs off. Airstrikes are not a strategy, they're a sentence in one. The real test is whether this is followed by a coherent plan to make Iran and its militias actually fear American retaliation, instead of one angry night that fades from the news cycle by Thursday.

Still, credit where it's due for now. American soldiers died and the president hit back instead of hitting the podium. That is the bare minimum, but it is a minimum this country has failed to meet more often than it should admit.