CAIRO — The drums of war are sounding across the Middle East, driven by the Trump administration as well as by disputed attacks on Saudi Arabian tankers and an oil pipeline. But Rohile Gharaibeh, a prominent Jordanian politician and newspaper columnist, has watched it all with a mixture of disdain and weary exasperation.

“A circus,” Mr. Gharaibeh said in a phone interview, describing recent events as little more than a spectacle with multiple foreign actors on the stage. “It’s no more than shenanigans to apply more pressure on Iran.”

As the Trump administration squares up against Iran, with what many see as alarming echoes of the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003, people across the Arab world are trying to figure out how worried they should be. In interviews, writers, businessmen and exiles expressed fear of a potentially dire war between the United States and Iran that for many has been brewing since the 1979 embassy siege in Tehran.

[Israel presses a case against Iran, but not necessarily for full-blown war.]

But they have also grown accustomed to an American president who often favors bluster over diplomacy as a tool of negotiation, yet ultimately backs down.