Today, the world is on the brink of a major war. First, an Israeli rocket attack killed a senior Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut.
Then, early yesterday morning, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, in a precision airstrike on an apartment building in Tehran.
These two surgical assassinations mark a major escalation of Israel’s twin conflicts with its neighbours: Lebanon to the north and the Palestinians to the south. They effectively put an end to any possibility of a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza.
Now Iran, which supports both armed groups, has raised the symbolic blood-red flag of vengeance over the main mosque in the holy city of Qom.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will view Israel’s elimination of Haniyeh — on Iranian soil — as a profound humiliation that can only be resolved by the shedding of Israeli blood.
A man walks through rubble following an airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday.
Israel has killed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a precision strike on an apartment building in Tehran
Khamenei, who had met the Hamas leader just hours earlier, described the terrorist butcher as “a dear guest in our house” before adding: “We consider his revenge as our duty.”
Haniyeh had flown to Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president. In a region where “image” and reputation are so valuable, the Iranian state knows it has no choice but to respond in kind.
The grim likelihood of war spreading across the Middle East and beyond has also been heightened by America’s apparent lack of interest.
The White House appears unwilling to enforce the “pax americana” that has protected the West and its interests for decades, while Joe Biden is widely seen as a lame duck dozing through the final months of his presidency.
Yesterday’s airstrike – presumably organised by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, from Jerusalem – took place at 2am in Tehran.
But it was still midnight in Washington DC and there should have been plenty of time for the White House to react.
The fact that neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have deigned to speak suggests Washington is either asleep, on summer vacation, on autopilot or unwilling to act in an election year — all equally dangerous situations.
Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed at a loss for words when he was interviewed a few hours later during a visit to Singapore.
“This is something we were not aware of and were not involved in. It is very difficult to speculate,” he stammered.
What’s next? After the nine-month siege of Gaza, Hamas is clearly no longer capable of inflicting much more pain on Israel.
Israel has been at war with Hamas for nine months and there are concerns the country could be drawn into a wider conflict.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visits Majdal Shams, where 12 children were killed in an attack on a soccer field
But, based in Lebanon, north of Israel, Hezbollah was able to fight Israel to a stalemate as recently as 2006.
The group still has a large arsenal of rockets and drones supplied by Iran.
It seems likely that Iran could also launch cruise and ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel in a repeat of April’s Operation True Promise, a coordinated attack with more than 300 missiles (in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus).
But it is Iran’s proxy forces in the rest of the Middle East that make an international conflict so terrifyingly plausible.
Houthi rebels in Yemen are straining Western military resources in the Red Sea by launching drone attacks on commercial vessels and directly targeting US and Royal Navy ships.
The Houthis have also vowed to launch airstrikes against Israel itself, in response to Jerusalem’s attacks on Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen.
Then there are Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq and Syria, which have a recent history of attacking Washington’s few remaining air bases in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have come to the conclusion that Israel can handle any escalation of the conflicts that now threaten to engulf his nation.
In seeking to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is repeating the tactic that allowed the United States to successfully neutralize al-Qaeda as a global threat: hunting down and destroying its leaders.
But Israel, of all countries, should know that wars of attrition are not won by killing alone.
Israel killed Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin in 2004, but the threat from Hamas has grown ever stronger.
The danger for Netanyahu and Israel is that the country will be drawn into a broader, larger war on many fronts. And if that happens, the ramifications will be very difficult to predict.
Palestinians attend protest following assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran
In terms of military resources, Israel – with US backing – appears well placed to survive such a conflict.
Although US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has previously said the United States wants to cool the temperature in the Middle East, Washington has been steadfast in its insistence that the US military would come to Israel’s aid if it were attacked by Iran, as it did when Tehran launched its massive drone and missile attack in April.
But it remains to be seen how many civilian deaths and economic damage the Israeli people are willing to endure before they oust Netanyahu and call for peace.
An ever-widening conflict would leave Britain in an enviable position.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ordered British aircraft based in Cyprus to shoot down Iranian drones heading for Israel in a show of support for the US and Israel. Sir Keir Starmer is likely to do the same.
But would Britain deploy troops on the ground if the US and Israel asked for military help? That would certainly make Britain and its overseas interests a target for Iran’s allies.
Where would our involvement leave British relations with our European neighbours, some of whom have been strong supporters of Palestinian civilians caught up in the Gaza conflict?
And how would this affect our relationship with Turkey, a NATO ally that has been increasingly steadfast in its support for Hamas and whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone so far as to threaten to send troops into Palestine to support Hamas?
Russia’s involvement in the conflict should also be taken into account.
Moscow is a long-term ally of Iran, providing it with drones and missiles for its war in Ukraine, and has a significant military presence in Syria, providing Russia’s only military base in the Mediterranean.
The Kremlin also remains a master of destabilizing tactics, using social media rumors and “useful idiots” in rival states to foment social unrest and division.
It is not yet time for sandbagging in Britain and the West, but the temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day and the usual mechanisms for detente and negotiation seem dangerously absent.
Who knows how or where it will end?
This is a very, very bad time to find a power vacuum in Washington.