Daniel Larison: "Iran hawks have been agitating for open conflict with Iran for years. Tonight, the Trump administration obliged them by assassinating the top IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani and the head of Kata'ib Hezbollah in a drone strike in Baghdad."
Fred Kaplan: "You don't deliberately kill someone like Soleimani unless you're at war with his country, and even then, you want to think long and hard before you do, given the near-certainty of blowback. The blowback may soon be coming. Friday morning, Khamenei called for three days of national mourning and a 'forceful revenge.' It would be shocking if he didn't follow through."
Alex Ward: "A deadly opening attack. Nearly untraceable, ruthless proxies spreading chaos on multiple continents. Costly miscalculations. And thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — killed in a conflict that would dwarf the war in Iraq. Welcome to the US-Iran war, which has the potential to be one of the worst conflicts in history."
Jonathan Chait: "Beginning in 2011, and continuing through the next year, Donald Trump began obsessively predicting that President Obama would start a war with Iran in order to be reelected. Trump stated it publicly, on at least a half-dozen occasions, explicitly positing that attacking Iran would help Obama win reelection."
Kevin Drum: "I'll make one prediction for sure: every time we kill someone like this, the replacement turns out to be even worse. We may consider Soleimani a state terrorist of the first order, but I'll bet he seems like a cautious and prudent institutionalist compared to whoever takes over for him."
ME: "Remember how long it'll be until we vote and…remember how volatile everything is about our current political scene. Everything can change tomorrow. Everything will change within the month, let alone the 321 days until we go to the polls and vote for whoever's names are on the ballots."