“War,” the late historian Barbara Tuchman once observed, “is the unfolding of miscalculations.” Fifty years ago, a war born of miscalculations and hubris erupted in the Middle East. While it was neither the first nor the last war in the region, it ranks among the most consequential. The Yom Kippur War changed both Israel and the broader Middle East forever, its aftereffects still visible today.

“Until the Yom Kippur War in 1973, until then, Israel didn’t have a chance but to fight for her life,” the late Israeli politician Shimon Peres observed. “We were attacked five times, outgunned, outnumbered, on a small piece of land, and our main challenge was to remain alive.” That challenge was particularly acute in October 1973, when Israel was caught flat-footed by a combined attack from the armies of Anwar Sadat’s Egypt and Hafez Assad’s Syria. The United States would alternately constrain and aid Israel in its defense.