We are at a dangerous precipice in the Middle East.
Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me Wednesday that it felt like we were at a "turning point” in the region. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times was more alarmist: It is a "Code Red Time” he wrote.
But even before Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah and Iran’s vast ballistic-missile retaliation, I was constantly asked how likely it was that the Middle East would be plunged into a regional war. Now as then, the short answer is that nobody knows. But the potential for a wider kinetic conflict hasn’t been greater in decades.
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