From the New York Times, I'm Katron Benholt, in for Sabrina Tarranisi.

This is the Daily.

A recent string of attacks across the Middle East has raised concerns that the war

between Hamas and Israel is spreading and might put pressure on other countries

like Iran and the United States to get more involved.

Today, my colleague Eric Schmidt, on the risk that the conflict is becoming an even wider war and the efforts underway to prevent that.

It's Thursday, January 11th.

Eric, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much.

From the moment that Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th and Israel responded to Gaza, the United States

has been very concerned about an escalation of this war into the region, and in the last few weeks

there have been a series of strikes and counter strikes in different parts of the Middle East and in the Red Sea.

And so I come to you, Eric, as our national security correspondent, to ask, is this the moment this conflict is turning into that

wider regional war that we've all been worrying about?

Well Katrina, I think you're right.

This is a moment of concern ever since the October 7th

attacks in Israel the Biden administration has been relentlessly focused not only

on responding to that more but specifically on how to avoid having the war widened beyond

Gaza. The president himself and his top aides feel that a wider war in this

region would be an economic disaster, a security

catastrophe, and would be very damaging going into an election year to have that kind of

conflict running, particularly one in which would

be hard to see how it would be contained.

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