Shapiro served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East until January—charged with, among other things, considering scenarios in which tensions between Israel and Iran escalated into all-out war and preparing U.

In sweeping attacks that started early Friday, Israel has struck at the regime in Tehran, targeting Iranian nuclear and military assets. The Israeli strikes have killed more than 70 people, including four top security chiefs, and damaged Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz.

National security experts warn that Israel's attack on Iran shows why Chinese land and asset purchases in the U.S. pose a significant threat to American security.

Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi said Saturday that Israel's strikes on his country were undermining nuclear talks with the United States. Araghchi, in a call with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,

The president who promised to easily and quickly bring about peace has now found himself accounting for yet another major escalation. President Donald Trump had publicly discouraged Israel from striking Iran in recent days,

Iran has told the United States and UK that it could retaliate if the countries aid Israel in attacks amid fears the Middle East will descend into war.

Mollie Hemingway, the editor in chief of The Federalist, warned that an escalation with Iran would cost Trump “really polling support that would be permanent,” and it would be seen as a “powerful gift” to the president’s “political enemies who still seek to destroy him and the movement he leads.”

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly demanded an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza and aid access, after the United States vetoed a similar effort in the Security Council last week.