The best-selling novel “Little Fires Everywhere” by Celeste Ng provides an apt title for the next book in the long-running non-fiction history of Middle East conflicts—that which will come after US President Donald J. Trump moves to modify or nullify the Iran nuclear agreement. Those fires, not so little for those directly affected, are burning in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza. The challenges for US policy in the coming months will not be directly related to Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s nuclear program poses no short-term threat. Iran will not have a nuclear weapons capability in the near future regardless of the president’s decision. It will be the “little fires” that require more attention than ever.
Read the entire piece at the New Atlanticist.
Image: US President Donald J. Trump wrote in an April 8 tweet in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria that Bashar Assad’s regime will be made to pay a “big price” for the attack. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)