On Friday morning, January 3, the United States killed Major General Qassim Suleimani, a top Iranian commander, and several Iran-backed militia leaders, with a drone strike to their convoy at Baghdad International Airport.

The strike capped a week of escalating tensions between the US and Iran, with pro-Iranian militia members in Iraq marching on the US embassy in Baghdad, burning an entry building, and trapping the staff inside for more than 24 hours. It was all part of a deadly series of events that included American airstrikes that killed more than two dozen Iranian militia members in Iraq and Syria over the weekend, preceded by rocket attacks that killed a US contractor, which the US blamed on an Iranian-backed militia.

Gary Samore, a professor of the practice of politics at Brandeis University and senior executive director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, was a senior arms control negotiator in the administrations of Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton. Until 2013, he served as the “WMD czar” in the Obama administration.

Here, he explains the current tensions between the US and Iran:

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