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In August 2022, the U.S. passed the most ambitious climate legislation of any country, ever. As the director of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council at the time, I helped design the law. Less than two years later, the Inflation Reduction Act has succeeded beyond my wildest hopes at unleashing demand for clean energy. So why do I find myself lying awake at night, worried that America could still fail to meet its climate goals?

Because even though unprecedented sums of money are flowing into clean energy, our current electricity system is failing to meet Americans’ demand for clean power. If we don’t fix it, the surge in investment will not deliver its full economic and planetary potential.

The Inflation Reduction Act was historic in scale, investing 10 times more than any prior climate legislation in the United States. Our theory was that we could use public incentives to encourage major private investment in areas where technological innovation could pay big dividends. This in turn would make zero-carbon technology cheaper, disperse it more widely, and drive down emissions faster. During two years of intense, often painful legislative negotiations, I wondered whether we would ever get to test this theory in practice. We ran endless models, but the models only get you so far. If we provided the public incentives, would the private investment really come?

We now can definitively say that the answer is yes. Total investment in clean energy was more than 70 percent higher in 2023 than in 2021, and now represents a larger share of U.S. domestic investment than oil and gas. Clean-energy manufacturing is off the charts. Money is disproportionately flowing into promising technologies that have yet to reach mass adoption, such as hydrogen, advanced geothermal, and carbon removal. And, thanks to a provision that allows companies to buy and sell the tax credits they generate, the law is creating an entirely new market for small developers.

But for all of this progress to deliver, it needs to translate into clean energy that Americans can actually use. In 2023, we added 32 gigawatts of clean electricity to the U.S. grid in the form of new solar, battery storage, wind, and nuclear. It was a record—but it was still only about two-thirds of what’s necessary to stay on track with the IRA’s goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

For decades, the biggest obstacle to clean energy in the U.S. was insufficient demand. That is no longer the case. The problem now is the structure of our electricity markets: the way we produce and consume electricity in America. We need to fix that if we want the biggest clean-energy investment in history to actually get the job done.

The topic of utility reform operates in what the climate writer David Roberts has described as a “force field of tedium.” I can say from experience that starting a cocktail-party conversation about public-utility-commission elections is a good way to find yourself standing alone. But if you care about averting the most apocalyptic consequences of climate change, you need to care about utilities.

A century ago, utilities were granted regional monopolies to sell electricity subject to a basic bargain. They could earn a profit by charging consumers for investments in building new power plants and transmission lines; in exchange, they’d commit to providing reliable electricity to all, and submit to regulation to make sure they followed through.

This model made sense for much of the 20th century, when generating electricity required building big, expensive fossil-fuel-powered steam turbines, and utilities needed to be assured of a healthy return on such heavy up-front investments. But it is at least a generation out of date. Over the past several decades, technology has opened up new ways of meeting consumers’ electricity demand. The 20th-century utility model doesn’t encourage this innovation. Instead, it defaults toward simply building more fossil-fuel-burning plants. As a result, consumers get a less reliable product at higher prices, and decarbonization takes a back seat.

[Robinson Meyer: It wasn’t just oil companies spreading climate denial]

Consider batteries. In recent years, battery technology has made huge leaps. Large batteries can charge up when prices are low, then push renewable electricity back onto the grid when people need power—even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. They can be paired with rooftop solar panels to create virtual power plants that balance out the grid, saving consumers billions of dollars a year while helping to meet electricity demand. During one evening in April, for example, batteries supplied as much as a fifth of California’s total energy demand.

Many utilities, however, won’t prioritize installing batteries, and they won’t invest in solutions that let consumers do more with less energy. That’s because these programs lower utilities’ capital expenditures, which lowers the rates they charge consumers and, in turn, their profits. If utilities don’t get paid for innovating, they’re unlikely to do it.

The problem is even more pronounced when it comes to our electricity grid. Right now the grid is old, dumb, and too small. New technology makes it easier to change that. Just by rewiring lines from the 1950s with advanced conductors made of materials such as carbon fiber, we can double the amount of power they move. If we did this at scale, the existing grid could meet all projected electricity demand over the next decade. This tech isn’t science fiction. It has been piloted in the field since the early 2000s. But utilities aren’t investing in it at scale.

Part of the problem is our antiquated system for permitting and siting transmission projects, which takes too long and costs too much. That’s why the White House worked with Senator Joe Manchin and other legislators to establish a framework for permitting reform to be passed separately from the IRA, an effort that unfortunately has stalled in Congress. But the deeper issue is the system in which our utilities themselves operate.

The IRA didn’t fix these issues. We were working with a 50–50 Senate, with no Republican support. That meant we had to pass the law through the budget-reconciliation process, which doesn’t allow for rewriting regulations. And although we were aware of the problems with electricity markets, we underestimated just how big a barrier they would pose to clean-energy adoption. This doesn’t mean the IRA is destined to fail. What it means is that the next phase of the fight against climate change must be the comparatively wonky, unsexy work of reforming our outdated electricity markets.

On a policy level, this isn’t rocket science. In Australia, households are paid for sending electricity back into the grid. Lo and behold, Australia today has the highest rate of rooftop solar panels per capita of any country. In the U.S., state legislatures and regulators in places as varied as Utah and Hawaii have figured out how to pay households to install batteries and send electricity back to the grid. Last year, Montana unanimously passed a law that gave utilities a financial incentive to use more advanced materials in their transmission lines. But these remain the exceptions to the rule.

[George Packer: How Virginia took on Dominion Energy]

The underlying challenge is political. As the incumbents in electricity markets, some utilities have a track record of undercutting regulatory reform. This can include illegal corruption, such as the case of a utility in Illinois that was caught bribing the Illinois House speaker to support legislation that raised consumers’ rates. More often, utilities rely on the depressingly legal practice of using money from Americans’ electricity bills to lobby regulators and legislators.

Utility companies’ most powerful weapon, however, isn’t cash or clout: It’s the force field of tedium. Even to environmentalists, the issue of utility reform feels esoteric and abstract. Yet what in the past may have felt like avoidable wonkery is now existential. Demand for electricity is surging for the first time in two decades, spurred by the spread of data centers. Across the Southeast, vertically integrated utilities are claiming that rising demand leaves them with no choice but to burn more fossil fuels. As recently as last month, Georgia Power won approval to build new gas plants over the objections of corporate customers and consumer advocates.

But the potential for winning politics is here as well. Biden has made leveling the playing field a centerpiece of his economic agenda. The environmental movement needs to tap into the same impulse. The price of energy touches every American family and business. If a utility is trying to bill consumers for the cost of an expensive new natural-gas plant instead of cheaper and cleaner alternatives, that isn’t a fair price—it’s a junk fee that consumers are paying for no good reason. When a utility misuses your money to influence its own regulators, that’s simple corruption.

Shifting this approach will not happen without a new vocabulary and new coalitions. The climate movement must recognize that its primary target is no longer just Big Oil; it’s the regulatory barriers that keep clean energy from getting built and delivered efficiently to American homes. The movement also needs to pressure Big Tech companies, whose AI offerings are driving up energy demands, to follow through on their lofty climate talk by supporting reform in the utility system as well.

Solving these problems will not be easy. But the IRA’s success to date, unfinished though it may be, offers hope. When we get the politics and the incentives right, we can generate change far faster than we ever predicted.

If there was a moment—a single shot, in fact—when the chemical composition of men’s tennis changed, it came on September 10, 2011, in the semifinals of the U.S. Open, as Novak Djokovic faced Roger Federer. At the time, Djokovic had won just three Grand Slam tournaments, compared with Federer’s towering 16. Federer took a two-sets-to-love lead and appeared to be cruising to victory. But Djokovic—who had improved his fitness in recent years, taking up yoga and giving up gluten—won the next two sets, sending the match to a fifth and deciding set.

The fans in Arthur Ashe Stadium stood strongly behind Federer. This annoyed Djokovic. At times, he grimaced at the fans and mocked them, bringing jeers. At 4–3 in the fifth set, Federer broke Djokovic’s serve to seize a 5–3 lead, providing him the opportunity to serve out the match. The crowd rose to its feet, cheering wildly. Federer then took a 40–15 lead, giving him two match points. Victory was a serve away.

What happened next is revealing: Djokovic is sneering; he appears disgusted with the whole scene. Federer hits a hard serve out wide to Djokovic’s forehand. It’s a good serve. But Djokovic, powered by what appears to be pure disdain, smacks the ball as hard as he can—like he doesn’t even care, like he’s not even trying to win the point, an insolent whip of the racket—for a where-did-that-come-from? cross-court winner. The fans roar, and Djokovic eggs them on sarcastically as though to say, So now you’re cheering for me?

Federer looks stunned. But he still has another match point in hand. The fans remain mostly behind him. He sets up to serve again. Djokovic is grinning and nodding his head, like some malevolent imp. This time Federer serves to Djokovic’s backhand and Djokovic returns the ball into the middle of the court, where Federer botches a forehand. The unforced error brings the game to deuce. After that, the players trade points for a bit, but Djokovic eventually wins the game, and then the next three, to win the match.

[Read: Tennis explains everything]

Afterward Federer, deflated and incredulous, seemed to feel that Djokovic had committed some kind of offense against tennis, dishonoring the sport. The Serb, he said, had given up: Facing double match point, Federer said, Djokovic didn’t look like someone “who believes much anymore in winning. To lose against someone like that, it’s very disappointing, because you feel like he was mentally out of it already. Just gets the lucky shot at the end, and off you go.” Do you really think Djokovic’s blistering return on the first match point was attributable to “luck,” a reporter asked, as opposed to “confidence”? “Confidence? Are you kidding me?” Federer said. “I mean, please. Some players grow up and play like that—being down 5–2 in the third, and they all just start slapping shots … For me, this is very hard to understand. How can you play a shot like that on match point?” It was a rare failure of grace for the gentlemanly Swiss.

That single shot by Djokovic seemed to break something in Federer; he was different after that. Sure, he still won two more Australian Open championships and two more Wimbledon championships—an enviable career in itself for just about any other player. But Djokovic had lodged a grain of sand in the gears of Federer’s machinery, throwing it off just enough to make his winning seem less inevitable. Djokovic, for his part, went on to beat Rafael Nadal in the finals the next day, and from there just kept methodically adding to his collection of Grand Slam titles. Since that day 12 years ago, Djokovic has won 21 (and counting) additional Grand Slam titles to Nadal’s 14 and Federer’s four.

Even when, as part of a surprising late-career resurgence, Federer made it back to the Wimbledon final against Djokovic, in 2019, those match points he’d held and lost in 2011 seemed to reverberate across the years, echoing in his head. They were certainly echoing in mine as I watched: Once again, Federer had two match points against Djokovic on his own serve in the fifth set—and once again Djokovic fought off the match points and won the championship, the first player since 1948 to come from down a match point to win the Wimbledon final.

Ever since that back-from-the-dead comeback against Federer in 2011, Djokovic has been enshrouded in a ruthless, cold-blooded unkillability. Until you’ve driven a stake through his heart by winning match point, he keeps coming and coming and coming. He revels in playing possum, cavalierly frittering sets away early against weaker players in order to make the eventual comeback and execution all the more delicious.

What is perhaps most intimidating about Djokovic is the steeliness of his nerve. The ice water in his veins gets chillier as the stakes get higher: The more important the point, the more likely he is to win it. The ATP keeps track of what it calls “pressure stats,” which measure performance on the highest-value, highest-stakes points (break points, tiebreakers, etc). Djokovic, unsurprisingly, has the highest ranking on the pressure-stats list among current players. But he also ranks highest all time by that metric, ahead of Pete Sampras, Nadal, and Federer. Before he lost a tiebreaker to Carlos Alcaraz in the Wimbledon championship last summer, Djokovic had won a staggering 15 straight tiebreakers in major tournaments. When everything is on the line, he rarely falters. Which suggests that the ridiculous shot that broke Federer’s spirit in 2011 was not pure luck, but an early demonstration of his ability to absorb the crowd’s hostility and channel it into a kind of dark energy that elevates his game to a superhuman level.

Inconveniently for partisans of Federer or Nadal, Djokovic’s case for being the best of the Big Three—and the greatest male player of all time, and one of the greatest athletes of all time, across all sports—grows ever stronger. Even though he lost in the semifinals of the Australian Open to Jannik Sinner in January, if he wins any of this year’s remaining Grand Slam tournaments—and oddsmakers currently have him as the favorite for the U.S. Open, and a close second-favorite at the French Open and Wimbledon—it will reach the point of irrefutability. And I’m having a hard time with that—because, like many other tennis fans, I can’t stand the guy.

Some of Djokovic’s unlikability surely comes with the fearsome intensity needed to be a great champion: Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Larry Bird and Tom Brady and Muhammad Ali were ruthless toward anyone they were competing against (and sometimes alongside of). And there have been plenty of unlikable tennis players before. Jimmy Connors—who, if you believe Andre Agassi, was narcissistic and cantankerous—was beloved for his gritty playing style and for, at least in this country, his brash Americanness. Others, such as the Romanian Ilie Năstase (nicknamed “Nasty” for antics like using an unconventionally “spaghetti-strung” racket, throwing temper tantrums, participating in a near-riot in a stadium, and making sexist and racist comments) and John McEnroe (who was a petulant brat on the court before becoming a revered elder statesman of the sport), acquired a kind of dark charisma, and they were embraced as rakish antiheroes.

But all of these players have relished their roles. Daniil Medvedev, the Russian currently ranked No. 5 in the world, also embraces his status as a villain, reveling in his obnoxiousness; this gives him a perverse charm. His comfort in his villainy, seasoned lightly with irony, endears him to fans. (Or at least to this fan.)

Djokovic’s problem is that he manifestly hates being hated, hates that he doesn’t receive the love and respect that Nadal and Federer did, even as he surpasses their on-court achievements. When Djokovic started winning majors in the late 2000s, he seemed to expect that he would be embraced by fans the way Federer and Nadal were. And when he wasn’t, his resentment fueled his desire for adulation, which made him try harder to be liked, which only tended to alienate people, as he oscillated between attempts at ingratiating himself with the fans and outbursts of resentment when they didn’t respond to him as he wanted. “I just feel like he has a sick obsession with wanting to be liked,” Nick Kyrgios, the fearsomely talented but volatile Australian player, said of him in 2019. “I just feel he wants to be liked so much that I just can’t stand him.”

Djokovic has mostly his own behavior to blame for his complex public image. He claims a mystical connection to wolves, based on an encounter he says he had with one as a little boy in Serbia. And there is indeed something lupine about Djokovic: the bared teeth, the feral snarling, the predatory ruthlessness, the bulging-eyed howls he emits after winning key points. Maybe he acquired these qualities as a survival mechanism during childhood. At age 11, he spent months sheltering from nightly bombings in Belgrade. During the day, he’d practice on what was left of bombed-out tennis courts. “We’d go to the site of the most recent attacks, figuring that if they bombed one place yesterday, they probably wouldn’t bomb it today,” he wrote in his 2013 book, Serve to Win. It’s the sort of triumph-in-the-face-of-adversity tale that tends to endear a player to the public. But the book’s subtitle—The 14-Day Gluten-Free Plan for Physical and Mental Excellence—bespeaks Djokovic’s more mercenary instincts (which, in fairness, may also be a product of those wartime years).

[From the August 1903 issue: Lawn tennis]

A few years ago, an enterprising tennis fan compiled a YouTube video called “89 Reasons Everyone Hates Novak Djokovic.” Before ATP Media blocked the video on copyright grounds, nearly half a million viewers were treated to 24 minutes of Djokovic smashing rackets, yelling at ball kids, yelling at fans, yelling at umpires, yelling at his coaches, quitting matches when he was behind, and taking questionable (and sometimes preposterous) injury timeouts. He was disqualified from the 2021 U.S. Open when, after losing a game in a fourth-round match, he struck a ball in frustration and pegged a line judge directly in the throat. He refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which led him to get deported from Australia and miss the 2022 Australian Open, as well as the 2022 U.S. Open because he wasn’t eligible for a visa. He knowingly exposed people to the virus when he did an interview and a photo shoot in France, the latter unmasked, after testing positive.

Djokovic has been photographed having a meal with a former commander of the Drina Wolves, among the perpetrators of the Bosnian genocide; more recently, his father showed up at a tournament with what appeared to be a pro–Vladimir Putin motorcycle gang waving Russian flags. (Djokovic Sr. apologized for the “disruption.”) And for those already predisposed to find Djokovic a shady character, his ardent anti-vaccine stance sits oddly alongside his willingness to ingest mysterious concoctions mixed with undeniable surreptitiousness by his team, not to mention his belief in the power of the Taopatch (a plastic-and-metal patch he wears affixed his chest whose “nanocrystals emit photons toward the body providing several health benefits,” according to the company that sells it). All of which makes him the Aaron Rodgers of professional tennis. (Rodgers, unsurprisingly, has taken to Instagram in support of Djokovic’s anti-vax stance.)

[Jemele Hill: The selfishness of Novak Djokovic]

Djokovic’s will to win is fearsome. But when necessary, he resorts to head games and skulduggery. He has an uncanny knack for resurrecting himself from the dead after visits to the bathroom. In the final of the Cincinnati Open against Carlos Alcaraz last summer, Djokovic was getting badly outplayed by the young Spaniard, and seemed to be suffering from heat stroke (as the Tennis Channel commentator Jim Courier put it at the time), requiring medical attention and struggling to stay on his feet. Then, after a trip to the restroom, he roared back to life, Lazarus from the dead, ultimately prevailing 5–7, 7–6, 7–6. In the finals of the French Open against Stefanos Tsitsipas in 2021, down two sets to love, Djokovic took a seven-minute bathroom break and then came back to win. What tactical or emotional adjustment, he was asked, had he made in the bathroom that allowed him to come back from two sets down against a player 11 years his junior? “I told myself I can do it, encouraged myself,” Djokovic said. In the quarterfinals of Wimbledon the following year, after dropping the first two sets to Sinner, 14 years his junior, he retreated to—where else?—the bathroom, where he said he managed to “reanimate” himself with a “pep talk” in the lavatory mirror, during which he gave himself “positive affirmations” and channeled the spirit of Kobe Bryant. Then he came back out and dominated the next three sets.

Djokovic makes such frequent and effective use of bathroom breaks that in 2021 The Wall Street Journal conducted a statistical analysis, calculating that he’d won 83.3 percent of the sets he played following bathroom breaks in major tournaments since 2013, five percentage points higher than his overall win rate. Aside from talking to himself in the mirror, what is he up to in the privacy of the bathroom? Anti-Djokovic conspiracists point meaningfully to his willingness to ingest those mysterious concoctions prepared by his coaches during matches. But the International Tennis Federation has an anti-doping policy and conducts regular drug testing; Djokovic has complained about the intrusiveness of the testing but has never failed one. And the rules do permit bathroom breaks, limited to three-minutes twice per match (five minutes if they are also changing clothes). Those time limits are rarely enforced, however, and Djokovic takes regular advantage of that.

I’ve tried to like Djokovic. I appreciate his style of play: He is arguably the best service returner in the history of the game, and one of the best overall defensive retrievers, stretching for impossible shots with his boneless Gumby limbs. And those 89 (or more) reasons to hate him notwithstanding, maybe he’s not a bad guy. Other men and women on the pro tour say they like him. Even Kygrios, the Aussie who professed a few years ago to find him insufferable, has come around to say that he and Djokovic now have a “bromance.” He has advocated for more money for lower-ranked players. He was the only player Naomi Osaka called out for supporting her when she controversially refused, on mental-health grounds, to do press conferences at the French Open in 2021. He is smart, speaks multiple languages, and is an uncanny mimic.

But rooting interests in sports can be irrational and ill-founded, the arbitrariness of their application bearing no relation to their intensity. Maybe my inability to like Djokovic reflects badly on me. That I prefer Roger Federer, all effortless elegance and Swiss-watch precision, perhaps suggests an aesthetic (even an aristocratic) prejudice against the grittier, sweatier, try-hard style that Djokovic brings to the game. But no one is sweatier or grittier than Rafael Nadal, a Tasmanian devil in a cloud of red clay, and I adore him not only for his brute baseline grinding and the nuclear intensity of his game but for his manifest sweetness of soul: He is proof that an adamantine will to win can coexist with sportsmanship and humility.

Djokovic may be most likable, or most relatable, in defeat. When he fell to Medvedev in the 2021 U.S. Open finals, failing in his quest to win a rare calendar Grand Slam (all four majors in the same year), and ended up sobbing under a towel in his chair, he received the most enthusiastic and appreciative cheers of his career. And when he was gracious in defeat to Alcaraz in the Wimbledon final last summer, some noted that maybe now he could finally move, as John McEnroe had before him, from ill-mannered churl to respected tennis statesman. Maybe now, in the evening of his career, he could finally earn not just the respect but the love accorded to Nadal and Federer.

But Djokovic seems more inclined to rage against the dying of the light. He told 60 Minutes that the younger players who are trying to wrest away his crown “awaken a beast in me.” (A wolf, I suspect.) At the U.S. Open last September, he collected his 24th Grand Slam. Before losing to Sinner in Melbourne in January, he’d had a 33-match winning streak at the Australian Open, stretching across four years (which included his scorched-earth revenge tour in 2023, when he won the Open after being banned for his vaccination status the year before). He is currently the No. 1 player in the world, by a fair margin—the oldest, at 37, ever to hold the top spot. And he continues to run on vinegar and bile: During his two weeks at the Australian Open this year, he criticized the up-and-coming Black American player Ben Shelton for not showing him proper “respect”; yelled at a heckling fan, telling him to come down and “say that to my face”; and aggressively stared down opponents after winning shots. More recently, in his semifinal loss to the Norwegian Casper Ruud at Monte Carlo in April, he shouted at a fan to “shut the fuck up.”

That last incident may be telling, because Djokovic’s outburst came when he was unraveling in the third set, during a match he uncharacteristically failed to come back and win. Might this be evidence that Djokovic is, finally, losing his invincibility? Sometimes when the end comes, it comes fast; what once seemed impossible looks in retrospect to have been inevitable. Ruud, a soft-spoken Scandinavian with one of the most powerful forehands in the game, had never before come close to beating Djokovic. But Ruud, at least, is a top-10 player.

Luca Nardi is not. A few weeks before Monte Carlo, in the third round at Indian Wells, Nardi, a 20-year-old Italian, who was ranked 123rd in the world at the time, became the lowest-ranked player to beat Djokovic in 18 years—and the lowest-ranked player ever to beat him in a big tournament. At the time of their meeting, Djokovic had won 19 more Grand Slam championships than Nardi had won professional matches (five). Nardi had in fact failed to gain regular access to the main draw at Indian Wells, sneaking in only as what’s known as a “lucky loser”—a player who gets a free pass into the tournament despite failing to qualify for it, by replacing a competitor who has to withdraw at the 11th hour due to injury.

That Djokovic got defeated by a lucky loser was shocking. Less shocking, perhaps, was Djokovic’s behavior during and after the match. In the third game of the second set, Nardi momentarily froze in confusion during a point because he thought a ball that landed in would be called out. He recovered in time to hit the ball and win the point from an off-guard Djokovic, who’d been thrown by Nardi’s pause. Nardi had done nothing wrong. But Djokovic complained to the umpire that Nardi’s hesitation should have been ruled a “hindrance,” and that the point should have been taken away from him. “It’s a desperation move,” Andy Roddick, the most recent American player to be ranked No. 1 in the world (way back in 2004), said of Djokovic’s attempt to litigate the point after it was played. “I don’t see any world where Novak should ever be desperate against someone ranked 123 in the world.”

What happened afterward was worse. Nardi had grown up idolizing Djokovic, with a poster of him on the wall of his childhood bedroom, and he had just won by far the biggest match of his career. But when meeting at the net for their post-match handshake, Djokovic offered only barbed congratulations, presuming to chastise him. “It’s not right,” Djokovic said, in Italian, “but bravo.” The tennis journalist Ricky Dimon, among others, called out the world No. 1 for this. “Appalling that Djokovic brought up the stopping play when he shook Nardi’s hand at the net,” he wrote on X. “1) that point had nothing to do with the outcome of the match, 2) it’s not Nardi’s call to make, 3) umpire made the right call.”

A month later, in the third round of the Rome Open, which he has won six times, Djokovic again lost weakly to a lower-ranked player, this time to the world No. 32, Alejandro Tabilo of Chile, who had never before beaten a top-10 player. Djokovic looked adrift on the court; his timing and balance were off. More astonishing, he looked anxious, double-faulting at key moments, including match point. Afterward, he made excuses. After his previous match, two days earlier, he’d been hit on the head with a water bottle accidentally dropped by an autograph-seeking fan in the stands, and Djokovic intimated that a concussion might have caused him to struggle with his balance. Maybe so.  

A few days ago, Djokovic surprised the tennis world by accepting a late wild-card entry into this week’s Geneva Open, a relatively low-level tournament. He seems belatedly to have concluded that he needs to try to play himself back into championship form before the French Open starts. But if he’s not had enough match play recently, that’s his own doing. After his earlier losses to Nardi and Ruud, Djokovic had immediately withdrawn from the next tournaments he’d been scheduled to play in, the Miami Open and the Madrid Open, respectively. This was driven, he said, by the need to conserve energy for the Grand Slams, which has been his strategy in recent years. Competing for the major championships at Djokovic’s age requires careful stewarding of resources. And the French Open begins on Sunday. But the abrupt withdrawals had a whiff of pique—of sulking in defeat, of insulating himself from losing to lesser mortals by refusing to play them until he’s on a stage commensurate with his stature and in fit enough condition to beat them.

But his strategy may be working: As of Thursday, he was into the Geneva semifinals, suggesting that once again he may be rounding into form at just the right time to defend his French Open title starting next week.

For a long time I resisted the notion that Djokovic could ever be the equal of Federer and Nadal. But as the years passed and the Serb’s trophies piled up, my arguments on behalf of the Swiss and the Spaniard have had to become more and more sophistic. I may finally have run out of arguments. But I’ll make one final attempt.

In that 2019 Wimbledon final, Federer outplayed Djokovic for much of the match, and he actually won more points than Djokovic did. But tennis scoring, like the Electoral College, allows the person who does the most winning to lose. And, like the 2016 election, this raises tantalizing counterfactuals: But for three points—one each in 2010 (another U.S. Open semifinal in which Djokovic fought off two match points to upset Federer), 2011, and 2019—Federer might now have 23 Grand Slam titles and Djokovic only 22, and the complexion of the argument over the Greatest Player of All Time would look different.

[Caira Conner: How will we remember Roger Federer? ]

Yet I confess that if my life depended on a single point of tennis and I had to pick a pro in his prime to play it for me, I might select Djokovic as my champion. Because had Djokovic not been banned from two Grand Slams for being unvaccinated against COVID, and disqualified from another for pegging that line judge in the throat, he might well have 27 Grand Slam titles. (Such is the role of contingency and luck in the unfolding of sports narratives, as in life.)

So, okay, I (grudgingly) acknowledge Djokovic’s greatness. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching him lose, or that I want his reign of dominance to extend any longer. And the evidence is mounting that it won’t. Years hence, we may be able to isolate the match, or the very point, when in retrospect it became clear that his grip on dominance had weakened. Will it turn out to be at last summer’s Wimbledon, when Alcaraz stared down Djokovic in the second-set tiebreak, winning it 8–6 and breaking the Serb’s astonishing streak of 15 straight tiebreak wins, puncturing his aura of invincibility, dispelling the illusion that he could never be beaten in the highest-stakes moments? Or will it be his loss in this year’s Australian Open semifinals, when he appeared strangely listless—or maybe, finally, just old—as he got steamrolled by the hard-hitting Sinner? Will it be his hapless loss to Alejandro Tabilo in Rome? Or will it be his loss to the lucky loser Luca Nardi at Indian Wells, his botching of that weird second-set point and his truculent, ungracious response to it?

That sports reveal character is a truism spouted regularly by coaches and motivational speakers. But it is not inaccurate. An essential part of Djokovic’s character, certainly, is his steely mental fortitude; that’s why I’d want him playing the point to save my life. But for the player I’d like children to emulate, in tennis or in life? Give me Alcaraz or Sinner—the future of men’s tennis—who both exhibit not just fiery competitive spirit but sportsmanship on the court, and generosity and kindness off it. Or give me Roger Federer.

Or give me Rafa Nadal, who—while his contemporary Djokovic was enjoying one of the best years of his career—endured a Job-like litany of injuries and setbacks, missing almost all of 2023 and falling to No. 644 in the world with dignity and stoicism. Who, as his body betrays him in multiple ways (abdominal tear, hip tear, another abdominal tear, quadriceps tear, abdominal tear again, back trouble, all after an injury that required him to play with his left foot anesthetized, so it was like he was playing on a stump), is trying to make a capstone run in what will almost surely be the last year of his career. It would be wonderful—truly storybook—if Nadal could claim a final Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, the French red clay courts he has lorded over for two decades, amassing a staggering 112–3 record and 14 championships there. Alas, that’s unlikely to happen. (Various oddsmakers have him anywhere from the third favorite to the eighth, despite his having won only a few professional matches in the past 16 months and being ranked in the 600s.) As the tournament approached and his performances were lackluster, Nadal kept saying that if his body did not feel better by the start of Roland Garros, he would not play. But he has arrived in Paris and is in the draw, though he had the back luck to land Alexander Zverev, who is currently No. 4 in the world, as his first-round opponent Sunday.

I, and millions of others around the world, would swoon if Nadal were to somehow magically win his 15th French Open. But as the tournament begins, my main hope is that Djokovic does not win it. And, for the first time in years, my expectation is that he won’t; the intimations of his tennis mortality have become too loud, the depredations of age finally overtaking him. As his physical powers wane, his fanatical competitiveness and otherworldly mental toughness can only carry him so far. To my eye, Djokovic may be suddenly, finally, done. Which is what I’ve believed about Djokovic in dozens of individual matches over the years … almost all of which he came back to win.

Perhaps you’ve noticed something new at your local market. Opill, the first oral contraceptive approved by the FDA for over-the-counter use, began shipping to U.S. stores in March. It has no age restrictions and does not require a physician’s sign-off; you can now buy a three-month supply at Walmart or Target the same way you might pick up Tylenol or tampons or a six-pack of seltzer.

This is, without a doubt, a momentous development in the realm of reproductive health. In the post-Dobbs environment, in which access to abortion care has been severely restricted across the United States, easier access to contraceptives is significant. Yet Opill also debuts as more and more women, in public forums and in their physicians’ offices, are raising concerns about the effects of hormonal birth control on their physical and mental well-being—and are pushing back against the idea that pharmaceuticals are their best options for trying to prevent pregnancy.

For the past few years, the “Why women are going off the pill” essay has become a staple of lifestyle journalism. A search for birth control on TikTok yields thousands of videos, many taking a negative stance on hormonal methods. Side effects are a common complaint: mood changes, headaches, irregular bleeding, lower libido—or, in some instances, more dangerous complications, such as blood clots. Many of the critiques note that women’s concerns have a history of being overlooked or dismissed by the medical establishment, and that women are still waiting for an improvement on the birth-control status quo.

[Read: The Coming Birth-Control Revolution]

In many spaces, this upsurge in discussion has been treated not with curiosity, but with contempt. Those airing dissatisfaction, or simply describing potential side effects, have been called antifeminist or accused of threatening other women’s birth-control access. Commentary critical of the pill has been dismissed as misinformation by mainstream news outlets—not always unfairly, as much of the material on social media can’t exactly be called reliable. (“Wellness” figures hawking fertility-awareness “coaching” abound, as do right-wing influencers with barely concealed agendas.)

But at the same time, many people online are recounting real stories of real symptoms, and expressing legitimate qualms about the options they’ve been given. Their distrust is not unfounded. Kate Clancy, a biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the author of Period: The Real Story of Menstruation, told me that women “are very often subject to medical betrayal—to having really awful experiences in a medical context.” Clancy said she was “glad there’s improved access.” But if you already harbor mistrust, “if you already have reasons to say, ‘Wow, these pharmaceuticals were not really made for me,’ then over time I understand why people arrive at a place where they are dissatisfied with current options.”

This is where the tenor and content of the discourse can be vexing: The public takedowns of skeptical women risk silencing the important conversations people ought to be able to have in service of meeting their health-care needs. If women’s overall betterment is the goal, then narrowly prioritizing access—celebrating a development such as Opill while shouting down the women simply trying to talk about their experiences—is counterproductive. To address reproductive health in full, taking into account questions about rights, responsibilities, and the physical and social ramifications of pharmaceutical solutions, requires a wider lens.

A few years ago, I was prescribed an oral contraceptive after a conversation with my doctor that could most generously be described as extremely brief. In the month I took the pill, I was overtaken by a debilitating brain fog that felt like a loss of self. I was irritable, snappish. I made my living as a professional columnist, yet suddenly I felt bad at writing—not in the sense of the usual scribbler’s procrastination, but in that I genuinely couldn’t generate ideas or string together words. I contemplated leaving my job. I cried a lot.

I realized the cause of this identity shift only after my prescription ran out and my regular personality snapped back into place, seemingly overnight. I hadn’t turned into a failure. Hormonal birth control had derailed me.

The pill is something of a catchall term, used to describe a variety of oral contraceptives that make the uterus inhospitable to pregnancy and often prevent ovulation. “Combination” pills, the most common type—and the kind I was prescribed—contain synthetic estrogen and progestin (a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone); “mini-pills,” of which Opill is one, contain progestin alone. Early versions of oral contraceptives had extremely high doses of both hormones, leading to sometimes severe side effects. Newer versions, with more carefully calibrated doses, have lessened, though not eliminated, those risks.

Today, oral contraceptives are the second-most popular birth-control method for women in the United States, after permanent sterilization. Fourteen percent of girls and women ages 15 to 49 use them, according to a federal survey from 2017 to 2019, the latest data available; nearly one in five American girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are on the pill. Over the decades, several studies have found that many people who start taking the pill will eventually go off it because the side effects are so intolerable. Concerns about side effects are also frequently named as a reason women resist taking their “preferred contraceptive method” in the first place.

It is not a stretch to imagine that young women taking an over-the-counter pill, unmonitored, could be left dealing with symptoms they might not be prepared for—without the recourse or the wherewithal to ask questions, or without the knowledge that what they’re experiencing is worthy of concern. Sarah E. Hill, a psychology professor at Texas Christian University and the author of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything, told me she’s in favor of removing barriers to access and supports Opill coming to market. But “I worry about it,” she said. “For everybody, but I worry about it most intensely for adolescents, whose brains are still developing.” Recent studies have found evidence of an increased risk of depression in some of the youngest users of hormonal birth control, and Hill said it troubles her to think about “young women who are most vulnerable to getting these kinds of side effects going on this medication and not being watched.”

Nearly all medications come with potential negative side effects, and we still use them as tools. You can get liver damage from taking too much Tylenol, but in the right amounts, the drug can lower a worrying fever. And in the case of birth control, of course, any adverse effects must be weighed against the life-changing alternative: becoming pregnant, one of the riskiest undertakings many women will ever experience. Forty-six percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, one of the highest rates among wealthy nations, and the rate tends to be highest among low-income populations and younger women. Those are the same populations most likely to take advantage of a pill that has no age restrictions and does not require a visit with a health-care provider for a prescription and subsequent renewals.

My own disturbing experience was, I know, not a universal one (though there is at least one high-quality study, of more than 1 million Danish women and girls, suggesting a linkage between hormonal birth control—especially progestin-only formulations—and higher rates of depression). And some people decide that even significant side effects are worth it when they desperately want to prevent pregnancy and hormonal birth control is the only, or the most readily accessible, option. Here is where Opill could be transformative—imagine a woman being pressured into pregnancy who can now buy birth control without alerting her partner, or a working mother who doesn’t have the time or resources to meet with a prescribing doctor but can walk to the nearest CVS.

But I do wonder: If I had started taking hormonal birth control unsupervised, as a teen or a young adult, would I have spent my entire adulthood believing my personality to be different than it was? What would that have meant for me—and the trajectory of my life?

It would be an understatement to say that women have put up with a lot in the name of reproductive health, including many discomforts and inconveniences that men have refused to endure, and that the conventions of medical research have allowed them to avoid. This is not to say that efforts have not been made to get men to do their part.

Andrea Tone, a medical historian and professor at McGill University, told me that in the 1960s and early ’70s, “activists clamored for a contraceptive pill for men so that they, too, could share its responsibilities and risks.” Clinical trials for male hormonal birth control began as early as the 1970s. But a 2016 study noted that a trial for a hormonal injection was canceled after men reported side effects, including acne and depression—never mind that for decades, women have endured these afflictions and worse.

[Read: New Male Contraceptives Could Be Infuriatingly Pain-Free and Easy]

In a recent Atlantic article, my colleague Katherine J. Wu detailed current research and potential innovations in male-managed birth control, noting that although the list of contraceptive options available to women has lengthened since the introduction of the pill 64 years ago, most of the changes have been incremental, and women are still left to deal with a wide variety of side effects and inconveniences. In contrast, the medical system seems to bend over backward to ensure male users are comfortable: Experts have said they doubt that the side effects typical of the female contraceptives on the market would be deemed acceptable by evaluators of the clinical trials of male birth-control methods.

Easier access to the pill eliminates real barriers. But in a medical industry that has long centered male comfort when it comes to reproductive health, an undue burden will always be placed on the people capable of becoming pregnant. As Tone put it, “Making pill-based hormonal contraception available OTC normalizes birth control as a female responsibility and, possibly, even an expectation.”

That expectation may very well continue to serve as an excuse for overprescribing, for overlooking women’s concerns, and for failing to hold accountable a health-care system that has historically not served women well. Ease of access is “a really good thing,” Clancy, the University of Illinois professor, told me. “But there are things in addition to contraception we need to be doing to improve the lives of people who can get pregnant, like broader social infrastructure to improve their care.” Instead, she said, “we just choose to kick the can down to the microsolution and make it about individuals making decisions.”

This is where the knee-jerk pushback to discussion of hormonal birth control’s potential downsides becomes harmful. To support individuals, we need more conversation, not less. It should be possible to celebrate increased access to birth control and to validate women’s negative experiences. It should be possible to praise Opill and to push back against the unfair assumption that women must bear the material and physical costs of contraception.

In a 2023 survey of people assigned female at birth, conducted by the reproductive-justice nonprofit Power to Decide, almost a quarter of respondents ages 15 to 19 said that they lacked sufficient information to decide which birth-control method was right for them—a gap that speaks to a larger problem with the American approach to reproductive health. In an ideal world, the health-care providers I spoke with told me, doctors would spend more time with patients, health literacy would be higher, and reproductive responsibility would be shared between women and men. To create such a world would require not only a cultural shift but also a remaking of the American way of providing care—a not-impossible task, but a much heavier lift than selling a pill.           

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Any assessment of the Middle East’s future must contend with an unpleasant fact: Iran remains committed to objectives that threaten both the region and U.S. interests. And those objectives are coming within reach as the country’s ballistic-missile arsenal and air-defense systems grow, and its drone technology improves.

All of this was on display last month, when Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel. No lives were lost—the result of not only Israel’s capable defenses but also the contributions of U.S. and allied forces. The attack showed that America’s continued presence in the region is crucial to dissuade further aggression. But our current policy isn’t responsive to this reality. U.S. military capabilities in the Middle East have steadily declined, emboldening Iran, whose leverage strengthens as international support for Israel wanes. Moreover, America’s clear desire to draw down in the region has undermined our relationships with allies.

Recent history demonstrates that a strong U.S. posture in the Middle East deters Iran. As the leader of U.S. Central Command, I had direct operational responsibility for the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the ruthless general responsible for the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service members. Iran had begun to doubt America’s will, which the strike on Soleimani then proved. The attack, in early 2020, forced Iran’s leaders to recalculate their months-long escalation against U.S. forces. Ultimately, I believe, it saved many lives.

[Read: Is Iran a country or a cause?]

The situation in Iran has changed, but the Soleimani strike offers a lesson that is going unheeded. Iran may seem unpredictable at times, but it respects American strength and responds to deterrence. When we withdraw, Iran advances. When we assert ourselves—having weighed the risks and prepared for all possibilities—Iran retreats. Soleimani’s life and death are a testament to this rule, which should guide our future policy in the Middle East.

Soleimani is a central character in the modern history of U.S.-Iran relations. Over 30 years, he became the face of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a distinctly independent branch of the armed forces tasked with ensuring the integrity of the Islamic Republic. Soleimani joined the IRGC in 1979, one year before Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. In the ensuing war, Soleimani developed a reputation as fearless and controlling, rising to the rank of division commander while still in his 20s. He emerged from the war with a bitter disdain for America, whose aid to Iraq he blamed for his country’s defeat.

This article has been adapted from McKenzie’s new book.

In 1997 or 1998, Soleimani became the commander of the Quds Force, an elite group within the IRGC that focuses on unconventional operations beyond Iran’s borders. Soleimani was indispensable in its development, relying on his charisma and fluent Arabic to expand Iran’s influence in the region. As commander, Soleimani had a direct line to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, becoming like a son to him. He was promoted to major general in 2011 and by 2014 was a hero in Iran, having been the subject of an extensive New Yorker essay. I often heard a story—perhaps apocryphal—about a senior official in the Obama administration plaintively asking an intel briefer, “Can’t you find a picture of him where he doesn’t look like George Clooney?”

As Soleimani’s fame grew, so did his ego. He became dictatorial, acting across the region often without consulting other Iranian intelligence entities, the conventional military, or even the larger IRGC. He shrewdly supported the return of American forces to Iraq, prompting the U.S. to do the heavy lifting of defeating the Islamic State. Then he drove us out of Iraq, killing U.S. and coalition service members, as well as innocent Iraqis and Syrians, with staggering efficiency. In his mind, he was untouchable: Asked about this in 2019, he replied, “What are they going to do, kill me?”

When I first joined Centcom as a young general, I watched the Obama administration—and the Bush administration before that—fail to counter the dynamism and leadership that Soleimani brought to the fight. I also watched the Israelis try their hand against him with no luck. So when I took over as commander in March 2019, one of the very first things I did was inquire if we had a plan to strike him, should the president ask us to do so. The answer was unsatisfying.

I directed Centcom’s joint special operations task force (JSOTF) commander to develop solutions. Other organizations were interested in Soleimani as well—including the CIA and regional partners—and we saw evidence that some of them had lobbied the White House to act against him. Several schemes were debated and set aside, either because they weren’t operationally feasible or because the political cost seemed too great. But they eventually grew into suitable options if the White House directed us to act.

Beginning two months into my tenure as commander, and continuing through mid-December 2019, American bases in Iraq were struck 19 times by mortar and rocket fire. Soleimani was clearly orchestrating the attacks, principally through his networks within Kataib Hezbollah, a radical paramilitary group in Iraq. The series of strikes culminated on the evening of Friday, December 27, when one of our air bases was hit by some 30 rockets. Four U.S. service members and two Iraqi-federal-police members were injured, and a U.S. contractor was killed. Whereas the previous attacks had been intended to annoy or to warn, this attack—launched into a densely populated area of the base—was intended to create mass casualties. I knew we had to respond.

Early the next morning, key members of my staff crowded into my home office, in Tampa, to review a range of options that we had been refining for months. This was all anticipatory; the authority to execute an attack could come only from President Donald Trump through Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, but we knew they would want us to present them with choices. We had a target in Yemen that we had been looking at for some time: a Quds Force commander with a long history of coordinating operations against U.S. and coalition forces. Other possible targets included an intelligence-collection ship crewed by the IRGC in the southern Red Sea—the Saviz—as well as air-defense and oil infrastructure in southern Iran.

After all of the options were thoroughly debated, I told my staff that we would recommend targets only inside Iraq and Syria—where we were already conducting military operations—to avoid broadening the conflict. We felt that four “logistics targets” and three “personality targets” were associated with the strike. Two of the personalities were Kataib Hezbollah facilitators; the third was Soleimani. We would also forward but not recommend action on the Yemen, Red Sea, and southern-Iran options.

By mid-morning, I had sent my recommendations to Secretary Esper through Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By late afternoon, we’d received approval to execute my preferred choice: striking a variety of logistics targets but not Soleimani or the facilitators.

We would strike the next day, Sunday, after which Esper and Milley would brief Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Milley had suggested to me that Trump might not think the attacks were enough. I knew how those meetings worked—I’d been in a few of them—and I had complete confidence in Milley. He could hold his own in the rough-and-tumble of a presidential briefing, which often featured lots of opinions from lots of people, not all of whom knew the full risks involved in an operation or those that would emerge after it was completed.

The author in a meeting at Centcom’s headquarters in Tampa in 2019 (Department of Defense)

Because I knew the president remained very interested in Soleimani, on Saturday evening I put my final edits on a paper that outlined what could happen if we chose to strike him. There was no question that he was a valid target, and his loss would make Iranian decision making much harder. It would also be a strong indication of U.S. will, which had been absent in our dealings with Iran for many years. But I was extremely concerned about how Iran might respond. The strike could have a deterring effect, or it could trigger a massive retaliation. After careful consideration, I believed that they would respond but probably not with an act of war—a possibility that had worried me for many years. But they still had lots of alternatives to cause us pain. I sent the paper to the secretary, routed through the chairman. I did not recommend against striking Soleimani, but I described the risks it entailed.

[Read: Qassem Soleimani haunted the Arab world]

We flew the Kataib Hezbollah strikes on Sunday afternoon with good results. We struck five sites across Syria and Iraq all within about a four-minute span. In at least one location, we struck during a Kataib Hezbollah staff meeting, killing several key leaders. After the strike, as Esper and Milley flew to Mar-a-Lago, we provided them with damage assessments and any other details we could gather from the attacks. We put together a simple one-slide presentation that Milley used to brief the president.

The chairman called that evening with a report on the briefing. As Milley had warned, Trump wasn’t satisfied; he instructed us to strike Soleimani if he went to Iraq. I was in my home office when Milley relayed this. My staffers were crammed around me, but I didn’t have the phone on speaker, so none of them could hear. I froze for a second or two, then asked him to repeat himself. I’d heard correctly.

Milley also told me that the president had approved strikes on the Quds Force commander in Yemen and on the Saviz, Iran’s ship in the Red Sea. There was a sense in the meeting, he said, that these strikes would bring Iran to the bargaining table. I could tell that the chairman did not agree with this position—and neither did I. We felt the strikes might restore deterrence, but we didn’t see a path to broader negotiations.

As we ended our call, I read back to the chairman what we’d been told to do—a product of a lifetime of receiving orders under stressful conditions. I called in the few members of my staff who weren’t already on hand for a 7 p.m. meeting. Everyone’s head snapped back just a little when I told them our instructions. We all knew what could come from these decisions, including the possibility that many of our friends on the other side of the world would have to go into the fire. We didn’t have time to dwell on it.

I knew that we could execute quickly on the Saviz and the commander in Yemen, but Soleimani was a more challenging target. In late fall, we had developed options to strike him in both Syria and Iraq. We preferred Syria; a strike against him in Iraq would inflame the Shiite militant groups, possibly resulting in a strong military and political backlash. It now looked like those concerns, which I knew the chairman shared, would be overridden.

The kind of targeting we were pursuing has three steps: finding, fixing, and finishing. Finding is a science, but fixing—translating all we know about the target’s movements and habits into a narrow window of time, space, and opportunity—is an art. Finishing, too, is an art: hitting a target while keeping collateral damage to an absolute minimum.

The Soleimani fix and finish solutions had come a long way since I’d first inquired about them in the spring. We now knew that when Soleimani arrived in Iraq, he typically landed at Baghdad International Airport and was quickly driven away. Thankfully traffic was often light on the airport’s access road, which generations of soldiers, airmen, and Marines knew as “Route Irish,” its military designation during the Iraq War. Quite a few U.S. and coalition service members had died on it thanks to Soleimani and his henchmen. The fix part of the equation grew complicated when Soleimani got off Route Irish and entered the crowded streets of Baghdad.

Striking Soleimani in the moments after he deplaned would also likely minimize collateral damage. We would use MQ-9 uncrewed aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles to attack his vehicle and that of his security escort. As always, there were significant constraints—the MQ-9s couldn’t stay above the airport for too long, so we had to know roughly when he would arrive. Our preference was to execute at night, with no cloud cover, but to some extent we were at the mercy of Soleimani’s schedule.

We had information suggesting that he would fly from Tehran to Baghdad on Tuesday, December 31. After much discussion, we decided to strike Soleimani first and then, within minutes, the commander in Yemen, so that he couldn’t be warned. We decided to save the Saviz for later; I wasn’t eager to sink it (and fortunately, we wouldn’t have to).

Meanwhile, protests began to develop at our embassy in Baghdad in response to the Kataib Hezbollah strikes. The images were disturbing and seemed to harden the desire in Washington to strike Soleimani. The specter of a Benghazi-like episode underlined everything we did. We ordered in Marines for added security and put AH-64 gunships overhead in a show of force. I grew more worried about what could happen after we hit Soleimani. Would it spur the crowd to try to overrun the embassy? What would our relationship with the Iraqi government look like in the aftermath of an attack?

[Read: Iran is not a ‘normal’ country]

I sensed that the National Security Council—which includes the secretaries of state and defense, and the national security adviser—was operating under the view that Iran would not retaliate against the United States. Even Milley told me, “The Shia militant groups will go apeshit, but I don’t think Iran will do anything directly against us.” I disagreed. To his great credit, the chairman understood my arguments and made sure we were prepared if it did.

The author in Afghanistan in August 2021 (1st Lt. Mark Andries / U.S. Marine Corps)

I went into Centcom headquarters early on December 31, the day we hoped to strike. The morning wore on while we waited for signs of Soleimani’s movement. Two huge monitors hung on the far wall. One showed a rotating series of black-and-white images from the MQ-9s. The other showed the hundreds of planes, including civilian airliners, that were crossing Iraq and Iran.

Soleimani finally left home and boarded a plane in Tehran, though we weren’t sure if the flight was chartered or commercial. The jet took off at about 9:45 a.m. ET for a two-hour flight to Baghdad. We were ready for him: Our aircraft were overhead and in good positions. When his plane approached Baghdad, however, it didn’t descend. I was on a conference call with Milley and Secretary Esper as we watched it pass the city at 30,000 feet.

Someone from the Pentagon asked me, “Can you shoot this fucker down?” Without deciding to execute the request, I called my air-component commander in Qatar. “If I give you an order to shoot this aircraft down, can you make it work?” The Air Force responded quickly, and we moved two fighters into a trail position behind the jet. We now had an option in hand to finish the mission if we were told to do so. We worked feverishly to determine if the flight was chartered or commercial.

It soon became apparent that the plane was headed to Damascus. We also learned that the jet was a much-delayed civilian flight, meaning at least 50 innocent people were probably on board. I immediately advised Milley that we should not shoot. Not even Soleimani was worth that loss of life. He and I quickly agreed that we would not engage. Our fighters rolled off, and the jet began its descent into Damascus. We also pulled back our aircraft from the mission in Yemen. We all took a deep breath and reconsidered our options. “Guidance from the president remains,” I told the staff and commanders at 10:48 a.m. “We’re going to take a shot when we have a shot.”

There were indications that Soleimani would travel from Damascus back to Baghdad in the next 36 hours. We still had another opportunity.

New Year’s Day came. I had an obligation in Tampa to deliver the game ball for the Outback Bowl. My security and communications teams came with me. The day was nearly cloudless; I hoped it would be in Baghdad too. The game went well—if you were cheering for Minnesota. We were among the Auburn faithful, so it was a long afternoon.

Before halftime, I received a call from Esper. I spent most of the second half on the phone with him and Milley, crouching in the suite’s bathroom, talking on a secure handset as my communications assistant stood outside the door, holding a Wi-Fi hotspot in the air. I told them that our latest intelligence suggested that Soleimani would leave Damascus soon, as early as the next day, and fly to Baghdad. The call ended in time for me to watch the end of a very disappointing game. It was a restless night.

The next day, I went to Centcom headquarters. By late afternoon, tension had begun to build. The flight we expected Soleimani to take was delayed an hour, and then another. I sat quietly at the head of the table and drank copious amounts of coffee. Everyone is looking at the commander during times like this; I knew that any unease on my part would be felt by all. I was confident that we were prepared, but many things were outside our control, and we would need to be ready to adapt. The countless hours that staff members and commanders had put into contingency planning were now ready to pay off. Time turns against you in these moments. It becomes compressed and precious. You need to rely on the work done before time becomes the most valuable commodity in the universe.

Finally, movement! Soleimani was delivered to the airplane in Damascus, boarding from the tarmac. The jet backed out and taxied for takeoff. The flight, a regularly scheduled commercial jet, took off from Damascus at 3:30 p.m. ET. I called the chairman. He and the secretaries of defense and state would monitor the action from a secure conference room in the Pentagon. The aircraft soon appeared on our tracking systems, and I watched it crawl east. Remembering our disappointment of a few days before, I kept a close eye on the altitude. Thankfully the plane began descending over Baghdad, landing at 4:35 p.m., shortly before midnight local time.

It was cloudy. Our MQ-9s flew low to maintain visibility, which meant they initially had to stay some distance away to avoid being heard or seen. We watched as stairs were rolled up to the front cabin door. At 4:40 p.m., we confirmed that it was Soleimani. My JSOTF commander called me and said, “Sir, things will now happen very quickly. If there’s any intent to stop it, we need to make that call now.” I had my orders, so I simply told him, “Take your shot when you have it.”

We watched Soleimani get into a car and pull away alongside a security vehicle. They began to negotiate the warren of ramps, parking areas, and streets to get to Irish. It was now 4:42 p.m. I had long since passed the authority to strike to the JSOTF commander, and he had further passed it down to the team that would release the weapons. Hard experience had taught us that devolving this authority to the lowest possible level as early as possible allowed for those with the best knowledge of the situation to act quickly, without referring back to headquarters.

The two vehicles picked up speed. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the big monitors. No one spoke. Then, suddenly, a great flash of white arced across the screen. Pieces of Soleimani’s car flew through the air. After a second or two, the security vehicle was struck. There was no cheering, no fist-bumping—just silence, as we watched the cars go up in flames. A minute later, we attacked again, dropping eight more weapons. The operation appeared to be a success, but we couldn’t yet confirm.

The burning wreckage of the drone strike that killed Soleimani (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office / NYT / Redux)

We had another target to attack, so our attention shifted to Yemen, where we carried out a similar strike on an isolated house where we believed the Quds Force commander to be. We later determined that we’d missed him, but the timing of the two strikes—13 minutes apart—was a remarkable achievement.

Soon it became clear that we had gotten Soleimani. I was home by about 9 p.m., when the first news reports started to appear. Only then did I have time to think about what had happened.

The decision to strike Soleimani was made by Trump, who was getting input from his advisers that Iran would not retaliate, a view that no one at Centcom or in the intelligence community shared. That didn’t mean the strike was unwarranted; it meant we weren’t sanguine about the aftermath.

[Eliot A. Cohen: Iran cannot be conciliated]

In the end, I believe that the president made the right decision. Had Soleimani not been stopped, more U.S., coalition, and Iraqi lives would have been lost as the direct result of his leadership. I believe more attacks were likely to happen in the immediate future. Soleimani wasn’t going to undertake them himself, but they would inevitably follow his trip to Iraq. The risk of inaction was greater than the risk of action.

Iran had doubted our ability to demonstrate such force, and for good reason—we had never done so over the course of at least two administrations. Now, for the first time in many years, Iran had seen the naked power of the United States. It had to recalculate. Small-scale attacks continued, particularly those that couldn’t be directly attributed to Iran. But operational guidance to both Iranian forces and their proxies had changed: Avoid major attacks on U.S. forces. This was a watershed moment in the U.S.-Iran relationship.

Striking Soleimani showed Iran a kind of resolve that had long been absent from U.S. policy. This cycle played out again last month, when Iran attacked Israel: American engagement countered Iranian aggression.

If we plan to remain in the Middle East, we must be prepared to show that same resolve. The risk of escalation is inevitable but manageable; it is the refusal to accept this risk that has hobbled our policy for so long. The lessons of the Soleimani strike are clear, and we shouldn’t forget them. The Iranians will respect our strength. They will take advantage of our weakness.

This article has been adapted from Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.’s new book, The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century.