CNN:

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

It would be easy to mock Donald Trump for blinking. Again.

After all, the president just decided not to decide whether to join Israel’s assault on Iran for up to two weeks.

But it’s not necessarily a sign of weakness when a commander in chief decides to take his time over matters of life and death.

“We’d all like a diplomatic resolution here. And diplomacy with a firm deadline can be very effective,” Brett McGurk, a former senior White House and State Department official, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “If this is a firm deadline, and by the end of the two weeks we either need a diplomatic resolution … or the president is prepared to use force … that can be a very effective combination.”

But Trump’s record of unpredictability casts doubt on whether he will make use of the maneuvering room he’s created.

In both his presidencies, Trump has often imposed two-week action deadlines on himself on thorny issues — including infrastructure, trade deals and Russia sanctions — and then done nothing. This is consistent with his trademark life strategy to perpetually delay reckonings — whether over personal financial crises, legal threats or the impossible decisions that land on the Oval Office desk.

Until Thursday, all the signs coming out of the White House were that Trump was moving close to ordering US bombing raids on Iran’s subterranean nuclear plant at Fordow — despite the risk this could drag the United States into another Middle East war.

But after reviewing strike options, he’s pulled back for now.

It didn’t take long for Trump critics to fill social media with new sightings of TACO (“Trump always chickens out”) syndrome. But Trump, for once, is operating in the real world and not the online one. No one knows what would happen if the US bombed Iran. The lives of US service personnel would be on the line. And geopolitical shockwaves could cause a regional war, an Iranian civil war, or a wave of reprisals from Tehran.

Trump isn’t the only president to equivocate over launching new military action in the Middle East as the dark shadow of the Iraq war still haunts US politics.

Comparisons will be made to ex-President Barack Obama’s decision to pass on bombing Syria to enforce a “red line” over chemical weapons use in 2013, which many analysts now view as a mistake. Obama demurred because he couldn’t be sure about what would happen the day after the US resorted to military force.

Sometimes, a decision by a president not to wage war— when multiple stakeholders are clamoring for action — can be as courageous as one to order strikes.

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