The "stupid Middle East war" had already been going on since late 2023 we just failed to acknowledge it. In the link below I used Brave search engine's AI to list the many times Iran's Houthi proxies attacked American ships in the Red Sea (read: Suez Canal) beginning in late 2023. Attacking our ships in the Suez Canal is a very big deal.
And yet the U.S. has maintained a ceasefire with the Houthis even while this Iran idiocy continues. Go figure.