President Donald Trump told his top national security advisers last week that because of the coronavirus pandemic he didn’t think an aggressive response to new attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias was the right move, according to one former and four current senior U.S. officials.

Trump expressed concern that hitting back hard at Iran at this time would make the U.S. look bad, given the extent to which Iran and the rest of the world are struggling to contain the spread of COVID-19, the officials said. It was a notable shift for a president who has made a bellicose approach to Iran a cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda, and shows how consumed he now is with the pandemic.

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