38 ROBERT MALLEY is President and CEO of the
International Crisis Group. During the Obama
administration, he served as Special Assistant
to the President, White House Middle East
Coordinator, and Senior Adviser on countering
the Islamic State.Iran, as a response to debilitating U.S.
sanctions; or by an Iranian-backed Shiite
militia in Iraq. I° Washington decided to
take military action against Tehran, this
could in turn prompt Iranian retaliation
against the United States’ Gul¡ allies, an
attack by Hezbollah on Israel, or a Shiite
militia operation against U.S. personnel in
Iraq. Likewise, Israeli operations against
Iranian allies anywhere in the Middle East
could trigger a regionwide chain reac-
tion. Because any development anywhere
in the region can have ripple eects
everywhere, narrowly containing a crisis
is fast becoming an exercise in futility.
When it comes to the Middle East,
Tip O’Neill, the storied Democratic
politician, had it backward: all politics—
especially local politics—is international.
In Yemen, a war pitting the Houthis, until
not long ago a relatively unexceptional
rebel group, against a debilitated central
government in the region’s poorest nation,
one whose prior internal con¥icts barely
caught the world’s notice, has become a
focal point for the Iranian-Saudi rivalry. It
has also become a possible trigger for
deeper U.S. military involvement. The
Syrian regime’s repression o¡ a popular
uprising, far more brutal than prior
crackdowns but hardly the ̄rst in the
region’s or even Syria’s modern history,
morphed into an international confronta-
tion drawing in a dozen countries. It has
resulted in the largest number o ́ Russians
ever killed by the United States and has
thrust both Russia and Turkey and Iran
and Israel to the brink o¡ war. Internal
strife in Libya sucked in not just Egypt,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the
United Arab Emirates (®) but also
Russia and the United States.
There is a principal explanation for
such risks. The Middle East has becomeThe Unwanted
Wars
Why the Middle East Is
More Combustible Than
EverRobert Malley
T
he war that now looms largest is
a war nobody apparently wants.
During his presidential cam-
paign, Donald Trump railed against the
United States’ entanglement in Middle
Eastern wars, and since assuming o¼ce,
he has not changed his tune. Iran has no
interest in a wide-ranging con¥ict that
it knows it could not win. Israel is
satis ̄ed with calibrated operations in
Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza but
fears a larger confrontation that could
expose it to thousands o¡ rockets. Saudi
Arabia is determined to push back
against Iran, but without confronting it
militarily. Yet the conditions for an
all-out war in the Middle East are riper
than at any time in recent memory.
A con¥ict could break out in any one o¡
a number o¡ places for any one o¡ a
number o¡ reasons. Consider the Septem-
ber 14 attack on Saudi oil facilities: it
could theoretically have been perpetrated
by the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, as
part o¡ their war with the kingdom; byTRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST