As Washington ramps up for a comprehensive re-engagement with the world, its Middle East portfolio will undoubtedly be affected by the aftermath of what promise to be consequential elections in Palestine, Israel and Iran .

Libya’s “parliament” (whose legitimacy is questionable) has endorsed the new transitional executive authority appointed by the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), a UN-chosen body that will itself be accused of corruption in a UN report to be released in the next few weeks.

A decade ago, despite the failed gamble that was the War on Terror and nearly two decades of ineffectual wars, incoherent policies, ill-conceived interventions or even a global financial crisis, few in the Arab world would have doubted US primacy in the Middle East.

Predictions about future conflicts tend to obsess over where and when a clash of nations or interests will reach a tipping point, leaving little room for critical analyses of how. After all, the means of warfare has significant influence on the outcomes.

The dispute began as a war of words and became a messy skirmish of retaliatory tariffs — souring already tense relations between Beijing and Washington.