MIDEAST ERUPTS — Israel, Iran, Turkey on Collision | John Mearsheimer I have spent my entire career studying how regional wars erupt and drag great powers into spirals they cannot control. But what has unfolded in the Middle East over the past week has made even me stop and ask: how exactly has the United States maneuvered itself to the edge of a major war that most Americans don’t even know is happening. Israel did not simply strike Iran. They delivered the blow at the precise moment Washington was trying to keep an already fragile negotiating process alive, and in doing so they shattered the last illusion that the region is still under American control. This was not a tactical incident. It was the moment when the entire post-Cold War U.S. Middle East strategy, built over three decades, began to crack at its weakest point.
