By: Erin Vanderhoof, Gabriel Sherman, Janine Di Giovanni, Hillary Busis, Clive Irving, Kase Wickman, Vincenzo Barney, Chris Smith, Rebecca Ford, Hadley Hall Meares, Savannah Walsh, Natalie Korach, Bess Levin
Ahead of a second Trump term, former FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan speaks to Vanity Fair about his fears the Middle East could shift “further towards chaos”—and his hopes that the president-elect’s talk of retribution will be just that. “I think I trust the institutions to manage this storm,” he says.