President Trump must not make the same mistakes as past presidents in the Middle East, according to The American Conservative senior writer Curt Mills.

"If you liked the Iraq war, we are back with the sequel: The Iran war," Mills said Thursday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Mills joined host Tucker Carlson as news broke that Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad's international airport.

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In response to the news, Mills wondered whether Soleimani's death represented a "Franz Ferdinand moment" -- a reference to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne that set off World War I.

"Is this a situation where a great power gets involved with a middle-tier power and gets the world into a World War?" asked Mills. "Iran is a problem for the U.S. and its allies in the region, but it's not an existential threat like China or Russia."

Both Moscow and Beijing, Mills remarked, would likely want to see America wrapped up in another military conflict in the Middle East.

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"I think the choice is clear," he later added. "The president should contain Iranian influence in the region. We should avoid a hot war -- which we are barreling toward -- at all costs."

Thursday's strike came in response to Tuesday's violent attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by pro-Iran militants who threw Molotov cocktails and set fire to part of the compound. Mills pointed out Thursday that the embassy has been "a fortress since we took out Saddam in 2003, and American troops, they are -- if we are not going to re-annex the country -- are effectively hostages."