We're a month away from an extremely important and extremely close presidential election,

which means, among other things, that we're all poised for an October surprise.

There's a good chance that the surprise, if it happens at all, will come out of the Middle East.

We'll discuss next.

This is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

Headline writers keep stating that Iran and Israel are edging closer to war,

but we're pretty much there already. Israel is partially dismantled

Iran's Lebanese proxy army Hezbollah which first fire rockets at Israel on

October 8th the day after the massacre of Israelis by Hamas.

Since the start of the war, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israel

and Iran's other proxies and Iran itself have joined in.

Israel has launched a series of devastating counterattacks and while President Biden supports Israel's right to defend itself

he's also warning the Israeli prime minister against further expansion

implicit in his message is a worry about what a wider war means for the presidential election here.

Joining me to discuss the Middle East Wars in America's role,

Peter Baker, the Chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times.

Francesca Chambers is a White House Correspondent for USA Today.

Franklin 4 is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, and David Ignatius is a foreign

affairs columnist at the

Washington Post. Thank you all for joining me. David I'm going to assign you to

get us up to speed. I want to read something that you wrote this week.

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