Washington is facing an increasingly complex and dangerous crisis resulting from the Israel-Hamas crisis, which has sparked repeated attacks and drawn US military attention and assets back to the Middle East, according to AFP.

The United States has deployed two aircraft carriers and other forces in a bid to deter a devastating region-wide conflict. But the current violence in the Middle East — while not rising to that level — still carries significant danger.

“Without question there’s been escalation,” but all parties, especially the United States, “are trying to manage these clashes in ways that do not explode into a regional war,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs.

However, “I think we should be deeply, deeply worried that step-by-step escalation, while perhaps no party intends it to turn into a regional conflagration, could lead us there,” he said.