From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

More violence and disorder in the Middle East as explosions break out in multiple parts of that part of the world as fallout increases from the war over Gaza.

Explosions in Iran now ISIS taking responsibility for them, though the Iranian government

still blames Israel. Plus the U.S. seems to issue an ultimatum to the Hutis with coalition of Western governments suggesting that if the

Hutis keep attacking commercial shipping, there will be, quote, consequences, unquote, to the Hutis.

We will talk about what those consequences could be.

Plus Iran seems to be at the center of it all.

We'll talk about the role Iran plays.

And then on a separate subject. The politics of the border heats up as the

New Year begins and a Republican sense of political advantage. We'll talk about how that could

affect the negotiations in Congress over border security and the bill to give more aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Welcome, I'm Paul Geego here with our Potomac Watch podcast on the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal.

I'm here with my colleagues at Kate Bachelor, the Odell, and Kim Strassal.

Welcome to you both. Let's start with the events in the Middle East. A lot of disparate violent

events all kind of flowing together. Hard to make some sense of what they all mean, but I guess the one underlying theme is that there

is some real risk, Kate, of the current conflict expanding.

And I guess let's start just maybe taking on these explosions

out of memorial service in Iran fourth year anniversary of the US targeting of

Kossam Salamani, the former Islamic Revolutionary Guard leader, and it was an awful event

where explosions killed something like 100 people, innocent civilians, most of them, and now ISIS, which is of course a Sunni Muslim group, and they are opposed to the Shiite Muslims who dominate in Tehran.

Does this look to you like it's that kind of terrorism?

Or could Iran respond in a way that widens the war if they attack Israel for it?

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