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The fighting in the Middle East continues as Hezbollah fires more rockets into

northern Israel this morning. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in

Lebanon for talks to resolve the crisis and will continue her tour with a visit to Israel

with Prime Minister Ehud Omert.

Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Chris Preble, takes a hard look at this situation.

Are we seeing a regional conflict developing in the Middle East?

Not yet.

It is true that particularly Hezbollah is a proxy for Syria and Iran,

but beyond that there is not yet a wider regional war.

There's a danger, however, that that could happen.

Some people are calling for attacks directly on Syria and Iran, kind of a deliberate escalation of the conflict.

So I think there is a danger, there's always a danger, particularly when the shooting starts

of the kind of miscalculation and escalation that is not necessarily intentional, but it just happens kind of by the logic of war.

Should the US respond in any way? Well, clearly the US government has a responsibility to

U.S. citizens in Lebanon and

the U.S. government over the past few days has worked to evacuate people who wish to

leave the country. Beyond that I think the U.S US has been very actively involved in Middle East

peace efforts for many many years going back to the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations

in 1979 and has been very actively involved since then. The simple truth is that these efforts have

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