Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Iran?

That’s what everyone must have thought this morning. The Iranian response to the killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the secretive Quds Force and arguably one of the most powerful men in Iran and the Middle East, was feeble, to say the least.

The Iranian military, and specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corps, launched a few dozen ballistic missiles against U.S. bases in Iraq and Jordan. Those missiles that didn’t malfunction mid-flight, did little more than to reshape the geography in or around the bases. No U.S. casualties nor significant materiel damage were reported.

But why so feeble a reaction?