Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty
There are concerns among many that the crisis in the Middle East sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, and the subsequent ongoing war in Gaza, could be the early stages of a world war.
And while it certainly has all the makings of the first major Middle Eastern modern regional war, it doesn’t yet have enough combustible power to ignite a world war. And, yes, that’s despite the killing on Saturday of three U.S. service personnel and the injuring of dozens more in a drone attack in Jordan, near the Syrian border, which the White House blames on Iranian-backed radical groups operating in Iraq and Syria.
However, it could easily prove to be one of several major regional fronts around the world in which revisionist powers push back, perhaps decisively, against the U.S.-led “rules-based order.”