Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is a wider Middle East war.

With me to discuss fears that we are on the brink of a wider war in the Middle East is Stephen Cook.

Stephen is the E.N.I. Enrico Matai Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council.

He is the author of four books on Middle East politics, the most recent of which is the end of ambition America's past, present, and future in the Middle East, which was released earlier this year.

Stephen is also a columnist for Foreign Policy Magazine.

Stephen, as always, thank you for sitting down the chat with me.

Thanks for having me back.

We are talking here, Stephen, a few days before Labor Day.

A lot has happened since we spoke in early June.

A ceasefire in Gaza remains elusive.

In late July, Israel killed Ismail Haniyah, a top Hamas leader,

by exploding a bomb inside the Tehran guesthouse where he was saying. That prompted Iranian pledges to retaliate. Israel also killed a senior

leader of Hezbollah with an airstrike on a building in a Beiruti suburb. Just days ago, Israel launched

a preemptive strike on Hezbollah missile and rocket

sites. It says we're preparing to attack Israel. And as we are talking, Israel has launched

raids against what it says are Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank. Help me make sense

of everything that's happening. Well, Jim, it is in one sense

extraordinarily complex and in another sense pretty straightforward. And that is that

Israel is fighting adversaries on a number of fronts. Certainly in Lebanon, obviously Gaza,

the West Bank is something that Israeli leaders are very, very concerned about.

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