Foreign Conflicts May Get Uglier Before Election Day

Rarely do foreign crises and a presidential election collide like they have in the past few days.

Share full article

Debris in Beirut, Lebanon, after an Israeli airstrike earlier this week.

Good evening! Tonight, my colleague David Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent, has a look at what the widening conflict in the Middle East might mean for the presidential campaign. Plus, a Times photographer explains what she saw in Georgia this week with Vice President Harris. — Jess Bidgood

By David E. Sanger

Former President Donald Trump has taken to making a somewhat disingenuous case that the world was peaceful when he was president, while the Biden administration has overseen nothing but chaos, explosions and death. And, he argues, Kamala Harris would be responsible for more of the same.

“You’re going to end up in World War III,” he has warned, including last month in Las Vegas.

Even by Trump’s hyperbolic standards, this is a bit much. Presidents can’t just turn most of the world’s conflicts on and off (See: World War I and World War II.) The world came a lot closer to general nuclear war in decades past — particularly during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — than it has lately, even amid Vladimir Putin’s many threats.

Nonetheless, the escalating clashes in the Middle East may mean that the next four weeks will see an intersection of foreign conflict and a presidential election unlike any in modern times. The remarkable collision of events could shape the final weeks of the presidential campaign, both by offering new fuel for Trump’s attacks and by putting Harris in both a diplomatic and a political bind.

An escalating conflict

Nearly a year into the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, there is suddenly a very real chance of a war between Israel and Iran.

And in that scenario, the chances the United States could get sucked in are very real.

Even if the most extreme attacks unfold — for example, if Israel takes out oil facilities or even nuclear sites in retaliation for this week’s largely failed Iranian missile attack — the escalation is highly unlikely to involve nuclear exchanges, or American troops on the ground.

Nonetheless, it could look very violent, and very scary, undergirding Trump’s warnings about global upheaval. A direct conflict with Iran, which is among the most powerful forces in the region, could easily inflame the long-running debate about why President Biden is sending thousands more American forces, along with aircraft carriers, squadrons of fighter jets and amphibious assault ships to the region.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.