ADVERTISEMENT
The future of the Middle East now rests on choices made in secrecy, under immense pressure, by leaders who no longer have the luxury of time. Whether this moment births a new, albeit brutal, regional order or serves as the opening salvo of a decade of chaos will depend on the ability of all parties to navigate the “threshold of escalation” without tumbling into the abyss. The old playbook of managed crisis is dead; the new one is being written in real-time, in the smoke over the mountains of Fordo. The world is watching to see if the gamble of preemption pays off, or if it has simply traded a future nuclear threat for a present and all-consuming war.
