It’s nearing midnight in Iraq’s Nineveh Plain when Behnam Benoka sets off on pastoral visits to families living in Bartella. 

“It’s important I am available to meet with them in their homes at this hour,” the Syriac Catholic priest said when I reached him by phone. “We wake in the night due to the situation, and people are worried.”

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump edged back from what many feared was the brink of war with Iran on Wednesday. He said in a televised address that Iran appeared to be “standing down” after an overnight missile strike on U.S. military positions in Iraq. No Americans died in the attack.

Many American journalists report battles within our government but don’t recognize fissures in the regimes of Iran, China, and other countries. I spoke Sunday evening (audio here) with international affairs strategist George Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, and asked him how his background in intelligence and international strategy influenced his perception of last Friday’s sensational report from Iraq. His edited responses are below.

The United States sent about 750 paratroopers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait on Wednesday in response to an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Up to 4,000 U.S. troops are on alert for swift deployment to the Middle East.

More than 800,000 civilians have migrated to Turkey from the northwestern Syrian region of Idlib since Russian and Syrian forces intensified airstrikes in April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday. A Turkish delegation met with Russian officials Monday in Moscow to try to iron out differences between the two countries over Syria.

We are stepping through his orchards, crunching grasses and wild thyme underfoot, rich aromas rising around us in the crisp morning air. I have come to walk these fields with Elias Antar.

At the 2 a.m. watch, gunshots aren’t far away. Automatic rifles trade fire in rounds that echo across the old buildings of Tel Tamer. At a compound adjoining the hospital, two watchmen with Free Burma Rangers stand guard, their faces framed between a glow of red lights coming from the emergency room and green lights of a minaret from the mosque across the way.

Unable to sleep, I join them, and ask whether this much shooting is normal. 

“As long as the bread factory is going, we know we’re OK.”