I'm Dan Kurtz-Valen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
Two weeks ago,
there was reason to think that the Middle East was becoming more stable than it had been for years.
Washington was pushing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia,
one piece of a broader attempt to reduce the U.S.
role in the region and focus on other priorities.
Hamas' attack on October 7th shattered those hopes.
But there had long been signs that all was not well,
that key assumptions underlying American strategy were on shaky ground.
In the months before the attacks, Suzanne Maloney and Mark Lynch saw the lights flashing red,
both worried that another crisis was coming.
Mark and Suzanne,
thank you so much
for joining me and for the excellent pieces you've both done for Foreign Affairs in recent days.
Great to be here.
Thanks for having us, Dan.
So if we'd been recording this literally 11 days ago, it's now Tuesday,
October 17th,
we'd be dissecting very different dynamics in the Middle East as most observers understood them.
It would seem like in the eyes of many, the region was achieving a kind of equilibrium,