While Iran and Israel are fighting, the rest of the center -east what the next step has

Fightery hunters and rockets regularly crack over the air over a strip of the Middle East. The latest war in the region, this time between Israel and Iran, has again placed millions of people in the crossfire of a conflict with which they want nothing to do.

The war has embraced two well -armed, old enemies who are ethnic and political from bijters in the region, but whose fighting, many of their neighbors are worried, can quickly spill out of their limits.

“We are constantly scared and the psychological toll has been tough,” says Rawan Muhaidat, 28, a mother of two in the city of Kafr Asad in northern Jordan.

The sight of Iranian rockets over the head, and the booms of air defenses that shoot them before they reach Israel, her children are terrified, who shrink between her and her husband while worried that their house could be hit.

“Every time a rocket passes and explodes, we think:” This is the one, “said Mrs. Muhaidat.

Adding the fears of many people is the possibility that President Trump will grant the request of Israel to intervene the United States by falling Bombs of 30,000 pounds Buried deep underground on an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility.

Such a step, experts say, could encourage Iran to take revenge against American military bases or allies in the middle, or to activate proxy troops, such as the Houthis in Yemen, to grind trade routes or to harm oil infrastructure, to damage the world economy.

“We open the box of a Pandora,” said Narges Bajoghli, university teacher Midden -Ooststudies at Johns Hopkins University. “Iran is not going to increase the white flag of surrender.”

The war emphasizes how important the power structure in the middle east has shifted in recent years.

A little over half a decade ago, Israel concentrated largely on his conflict with the Palestinians while Shadow war With Iran due to incidental murders and other secret attacks. But the immediate direct confrontation, partly for fear of recovering the network of militias that Iran supported in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

At that time, most Arab countries married Israel, a Jewish majority democracy, for the treatment of the Palestinians, and many hated the predominantly Persian Iran for what they considered the destructive interference in the Arab world. But a few Arab states started to see Israel as a potential partner in dealing with their own concerns about Iran and established formal diplomatic relations.

That photo has now changed.

The fatal surprise attack by the Palestinian militant group of Hamas in October 2023 increased the feeling of vulnerability of Israel, and the country has become increasingly aggressive in the disintegration of observed threats that are far beyond its limits.

For Iran, the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and The expulsion of President Bashar al-Assad last yearDecimated his regional proxy network and left it even more isolated.

Powerful Arab countries, including Saudi Aarabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, continued their own diplomatic traces with Tehran to reduce tensions. Now they also hope to avoid a war in their neighborhood that could place them in the Kruiharen because of their partnerships with the United States.

The current conflict started on 13 June, at a bad moment for the international institutions that were established to try to contain such hostilities.

The war of Israel in Gaza, who started after Hamas’s 7 October 2023, has killed more than 50,000 people and caused widespread destruction and hunger in Gaza.

Few seem to expect that the warring parties in the new conflict will be held responsible for killing citizens or striking hospitals, as Israel has done Repeatedly in Gaza – Sometimes because Hamas built tunnels underneath – and if Iran did it in Israel On Thursday.

The expectations are low that the action by the United Nations Security Council will stop war, not least because the United States almost certainly pronounces a veto about every measure that asked for its end. And the Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, told High European officials during conversations in Geneva on Friday that Iran would not negotiate under fire.

Mr. Trump rejected European efforts anyway and said, “Iran does not want to speak to Europe. They want to talk to us.”

He said he will decide “Within the next two weeks“Or the United States will bomb Iran.

Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel released that lack of international action to stop the war to continue as they choose, said Professor Bajoghli.

“We are going into a new international age, a new world order, and in some respects it seems to be an old world order and the law of the jungle, but with the 21st-century technology and weapons,” she said.

Israel initiated the war with a multiple surprise attack damaged by the Iranian military and nuclear locations, largely destroyed air defenses and killed top nuclear scientists and military officers in their houses, as well as A number of citizens. Iran has responded by firing ballistic missiles in Israel, some of which have hit civil apartment towers. At least 224 people were killed in Iran and 24 in Israel.

Mr Netanyahu said that Israel has launched the attack to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon that Israel would consider an existential threat. He has also proposed the more extensive goals of regional transformation and regime change.

“We are changing the face of the middle -east, and that can lead to radical changes in Iran himself,” he said on Monday.

Iran insists that his nuclear program is peaceful and intelligence services of the United States have assessed That Iran did not decide to look for a nuclear weapon, although that could change if the United States killed the underground enrichment facility of Iran in Fordo Bombs or if Israel kills Iran’s highest leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

For his part, Ayatollah Khamenei has threatened to take revenge when the United States strikes Iran.

“The damage that the US will suffer will certainly be irreparable if they enter this conflict military,” he said in a On television on television On Wednesday.

The war is extremely undesirable in the rest of the middle, where other governments prefer to place the conflicts of the region behind them, so that they can rebuild what has been destroyed and concentrate on strengthening their economies.

There is little affinity for one of the warring parties. Most Arab states avoid Israel, and even governments that have set up diplomatic relations, have condemned how it fought in Gaza and his attack on Iran.

But that doesn’t mean they support Iran. In a predominantly Sunni Muslim region, most Arab governments see the revolutionary Shiite theocracy of Iran as Anathema, and many people in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere the interventions of Iran in their country.

Many middle leaders have complicated reactions to war, said Dina Esfandiary, the main analyst in the middle -east at Bloomberg Economics, a research group.

“Officials in the region are quietly happy that Iran’s best buyer is little by little, that Iranian proxies and their leaders are brought little by little,” she said. “That removes from their perspective from one of the real threats in the region for them.”

But many are also afraid of an extensive role in the East for Israel, she added, given the enormous military and diplomatic support it receives from the United States.

That makes other countries wonder, she said: “Where is Israel going?“

Rana F. Sweweis Reporting contributed to Amman, Jordan, and Falih Hassan van Baghdad.