President Biden has been walking a politico-military tightrope since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza. But he’s about to traipse an even narrower rope. He needs to respond to an Iranian-backed militia’s drone strike that killed three U.S. servicemen in a decisive, powerful way—without widening the war any further.

Some—including Sen. Tom Cotton and a few commentators—are urging him to widen the war. Iran is supplying the entire network of militias fueling the region’s wars—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and whichever wing launched the drone that killed three Americans—so it’s time, they say, to strike at the belly of the beast.

This is a bad idea. First, Iran is three times the size of Iraq, which some of these same war-criers thought would be a “cakewalk” back in 2003, before George W. Bush’s invasion set off an insurgency that kept U.S. troops there for eight years and destabilized the entire Middle East. Second, though many Iranian citizens, especially educated youth in the cities, like the United States and hate their Islamic regime, the scales would likely shift if the U.S. attacked or invaded their homeland. Third, Iran has denied playing any part in the attack (just as it also denied involvement in Hamas’ brutal murders of Oct. 7), and there is no evidence suggesting Iran played a part—not directly anyway.

But the Iranians have been walking their own tightrope—a daringly dangerous one. They have supplied, and in some cases trained, their network of proxy militias—the “axis of resistance,” it’s called—and, whether or not Iranian forces have taken part in the attacks, Iran’s leaders back in Tehran have done little to stop the mayhem and a great deal to encourage it.

Since Oct. 7, these militias have launched more than 150 drones or missiles against U.S. forces in the region. The vast majority have been shot down by anti-air weapons. The others inflicted little or no damage. But now, with the deaths and injuries in Jordan, the Iranians have slipped off the tightrope—the game has turned deadly—and they have to pay a price.

In some ways, the Iranian leaders must realize this fact. On Tuesday, they issued a statement not just denying involvement in the attack on the U.S. base in Jordan but also urging President Biden to respond to the attack with diplomacy. (Oh, now they want to talk things over peacefully.)

Tuesday morning, on his way to a campaign event in Florida, Biden told reporters that he’d settled on a response to the fatal drone strike. Asked if Iran was to blame for the strike, Biden said that he didn’t want to widen the war, but added, “I do hold them responsible, in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did........

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