US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on 29 September 2023 that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” That all changed on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, which unsurprisingly invaded Gaza to destroy Hamas.

After more than six months, it appears to many that Israel is losing its war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel is fighting Hezbollah on its northern border, relations between Jerusalem and Washington are strained, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Meanwhile, there is great danger of escalation across the region, as the fighting between Israel and Iran makes clear. Indeed, there is a possibility the United States, which is already fighting the Houthis, might end up in a war with Iran, which neither country wants.

What might be the lasting consequences of these conflicts? Who will emerge weaker and who stronger? And what does this crisis mean for U.S. foreign policy in the region, Ukraine and East Asia?

John Joseph Mearsheimer (1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. In 1974, while in the U.S. Air Force, Mearsheimer earned a master's degree in international relations from the University of Southern California. He entered Cornell University and in 1980 earned a doctorate in government, concentrating his studies in international relations. From 1978 to 1979, he was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. From 1980 to 1982, Mearsheimer was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs.

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