Warren, who faced criticism from the left for initially prefacing her alarm at the threat of “another costly war” with the statement that Suleimani was “a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” amplified Sanders’s anti-war message more clearly on Friday. “Donald Trump is dangerous and reckless,” she wrote. “He’s escalated crises and betrayed our partners. He’s undermined our diplomatic relationships for his own personal, political gain. We cannot allow him to drag us back into another war. We must speak out.”

Biden also criticized the killing of the general as needlessly provocative, but issued a statement that embraced the Trump administration’s argument that Suleimani, who orchestrated deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers during the post-war occupation of Iraq, “deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops.” The former vice president — who voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq when he was still in the Senate, and later authored a bizarre plan to partition the country along ethnic and sectarian lines — was critical mainly of what he called Trump’s failure to explain his “strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel” and Trump’s lack of a “long-term vision” for the U.S. military’s role in the region.

(Trump offered a glimpse of his addled vision on Saturday, threatening to strike 52 targets in Iran, including cultural sites, representing, he tweeted, “the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago.”)

Buttigieg’s initial statement also endorsed Trump’s claim that killing an Iranian general who supported Iraqi militias that oppose the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in their country was in line with the commander-in-chief’s responsibility “to protect Americans and our national security interests.” “There is no question that Qassim Suleimani was a threat to that safety and security, and that he masterminded threats and attacks on Americans and our allies, leading to hundreds of deaths,” Buttigieg wrote. “But there are serious questions about how this decision was made and whether we are prepared for the consequences.”

Like Biden, and to a lesser extent Warren, Buttigieg seemed to glide past the contradictions inherent in describing the killing of 603 American troops in Iraq by Iraqis as a crime akin to terrorism, but of course those soldiers were only there because of the invasion Sanders has repeatedly called on the campaign trail “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.”

“‘Yeah but what’s your strategy?’” is the safest, lamest, most DC criticism possible,” Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss observed on Twitter. “Trump’s Iran policy is foolish, dangerous, and driven by hardline ideologues who’ve been pushing for war for years. Who cares what the strategy is for achieving it. The policy needs to change.”

If the ongoing calamity in Iraq does factor into the decisions of Democratic primary voters, it won’t be the first time.

Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize the invasion played a pivotal role in the 2008 Democratic primary, contrasting sharply with Barack Obama’s opposition, as a state senator at the time, to what he called, “A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Four years earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein just one month before the 2004 Iowa caucuses had seemed to tilt the Democratic contest in the opposite direction. That year, as President George W. Bush’s approval rating surged 9 points following Hussein’s arrest, Iowa voters turned away from an insurgent, critic of the war, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, in favor of a more hawkish Senator and decorated veteran, John Kerry, who was seen as more electable in wartime.

In the aftermath of Trump’s strike on Iran’s leading military figure, Biden and Buttigieg, egged on by conservative commentators, appear to be vying for the mantle of John Kerry 2.0 as each man argues that his prior experience with national security makes him the best alternative to Trump in the general election. On the campaign trail and in social media ads, Biden has stressed his foreign policy credentials, and familiarity with the intricacies of Iran’s military capabilities.

Biden told voters in Iowa on Friday that he doubts that Trump is capable of handling Iran’s likely retaliation.