The risk of nuclear war in the Middle East today is dangerously high, and Donald Trump is responsible.

Let me explain.

I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. I clearly remember the "duck and cover" exercises we conducted in elementary school, crawling under the wooden desks when an alarm bell rang out at the Greenfield Village School. Our teacher tried to calm our nerves by claiming this was “a hurricane drill.” But with Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis on the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, we all knew what the drills were really about.

And I recall how scared I was again about the danger of nuclear war a few years later, as a teenager in the 1970s. On Oct. 6, 1973, Israel was attacked by Egyptian and Syrian forces in a surprise attack in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Israeli Defense Forces gradually fought back, supplied by U.S. emergency arms shipments, defeating the Syrians and crossing the Suez Canal to surround the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai desert. Then, on Oct. 24, 1973, the Soviet Union threatened to send troops to Egypt to enter the war, on the side of its Egyptian allies.

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Suddenly, President Richard Nixon put U.S. nuclear forces on a high-level DEFCON 3 alert to try to deter the Soviet Union from sending forces to the Middle East. Threatening nuclear war was not prudent (I thought that even in my teenage years), but simultaneously, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully put pressure on Israel to accept a cease-fire and end the 1973 war.  This cease-fire eventually led to the Camp David Accords and the peace between Israel and Egypt that still exists today.

We also now know that Nixon, facing Watergate soon thereafter, was so distraught and irrational in his decision-making that Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger actually warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to automatically follow military orders from the president, but rather to check with him first. Schlessinger’s actions were not constitutional, but were prudent and wise.

This dark history is relevant today. For I have never been worried about a nuclear war in the Middle East since then ... until now.

No deal

A war is raging in the Middle East, and Iran is on the brink of getting nuclear weapons. Donald Trump is responsible for this dangerous development because his administration withdrew, in 2018, from the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal that restricted Tehran's ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in Iran verified that Tehran was in compliance, but then-President Donald Trump claimed that he, the self-proclaimed “master of the deal,” would get a better agreement.

He did not.

Iran was a year or two away from getting the bomb when the Obama Administration negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement, and when Trump cancelled it. Now, U.S. intelligence agencies report that Iran “has greatly expanded its nuclear program” and “has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium.” The head of the IAEA now estimates that Iran has “amassed enough nuclear material for several weapons, not just one.”  That is the direct result of Trump's ego and poor decision-making.

In the coming weeks or months, Israel may well attack the Iranian nuclear facilities in response to Iran’s recent missile and drone attack on Israel. But Israel lacks the confidence that it could destroy all of the Iranian nuclear materials, both because the enrichment centrifuges are in deep underground facilities — and because most of the IAEA inspectors were kicked out of Iran due to Trump’s rash withdrawal from the nuclear deal. This means Israel can’t be sure that it knows where all Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities are now located. And even if an attack is successful in the short-term, Iran will likely then rush to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.

High stakes

When you get to the polls, think about that scenario.

Do you want a President Kamala Harris who supports Israel, but has expressed doubts about the way Israel is fighting its wars today?

Or do you want a President Trump, who criticized calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows what he’s doing” and advised him “have victory, get your victory, and get it over with.”

Do you want a President Harris, a former prosecutor known to stay calm and focused under pressure?

Or do you want a President Trump, who was so impulsive and vengeful at the end of his term in office that his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like Nixon’s secretary of defense, told senior military officers to check back with him before following any presidential orders to use military force?

The voters of Michigan may well decide who is the next president of the United States.  They should remember that the risk of nuclear war is on the ballot in November.

Scott D. Sagan is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the author, among other books, of The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons.

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