We are at a dangerous precipice in the Middle East.

Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me Wednesday that it felt like we were at a ※turning point§ in the region. Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times was more alarmist: It is a ※Code Red Time§ he wrote.

But even before Israel*s campaign against Hezbollah and Iran*s vast ballistic-missile retaliation, I was constantly asked how likely it was that the Middle East would be plunged into a regional war. Now as then, the short answer is that nobody knows. But the potential for a wider kinetic conflict hasn*t been greater in decades.