One of my ironclad rules of reporting in the Middle East is that sometimes you need to re-report a story to see things even more clearly than you did earlier. I’m having that experience with the Iran-Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war, which could soon draw in the United States.

It could not be more clear now that, while Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7 was triggered in part by reckless Israeli settlement expansions, brutal treatment of Palestinian prisoners and encroachments on Islamic religious sites in Jerusalem, the terrorist assault was also part of a broader Iranian campaign to drive the US out of the Middle East and America’s Arab and Israeli allies into a corner – before they could corner Iran.