For the past number of months, I have found it difficult to write about the ongoing calamity in the Middle East. This isn’t because it’s unimportant—in fact, it’s hard to think about much going on in the world right now that matters more. It’s because everything that has transpired over the past year has been so utterly predictable that any further commentary felt redundant. All but the utterly delusional could see what Israel’s course of action would be: an endlessly escalatory and ever-expanding bloodbath aimed at tying up what its leadership imagined to be loose ends. This, in theory, could be mediated by the power of the United States, but Joe Biden’s history also made it clear that he would be utterly subservient to their whims.

Everything that has come from these circumstances has been exactly what one would expect. The mass death and rampant human rights violations have come entirely as expected. The expansion of the conflict, first in Yemen and now in Lebanon, has been entirely as expected. Biden’s efforts at a ceasefire, “tireless” or otherwise, being completely thwarted by his good friend Netanyahu was more than expected. The only real question mark that remained was the possibility of a full-on war between Israel and Iran, which had begun to feel like a matter of “when” more than “if” as the rogue Jewish state became more and more deranged. And as the U.S. election has come closer and closer, the possibility of this capstone failure for Biden has loomed large as the last true domino left to fall before November.

Now, this domino appears as if it may be on its way down. Through its invasion of Lebanon, Israel brought its long-running proxy-driven with Iran to a turning point, forcing the Islamic Republic to respond with a nearly-unprecedented direct attack on the apartheid state. Now that the ball sits in Israel’s court, it can be very easy to imagine that they are in a position to, as Donald Trump has suggested, win the election for the Republicans. Just the suggestion of an attack on Iran’s oil fields has been enough to send oil prices spiking, raising the specter of an eleventh-hour economic crisis. Nuclear facilities and—as is always the case with Israel—civilian centers also appear to be entirely on the table. The worst possible outcome, at the worst possible time, appears to be in the cards.

Democrats want you to believe that they are powerless in the face of this. Not only are they not, but it’s not only the White House that has tremendous agency here. Here’s how Vice President Kamala Harris has come to the brink of a crisis of her own making, how such a crisis may impact things if it comes to pass, and how she may yet find an unexpected savior—that is, if that savior is willing to trust her...