There will be no quick or easy wins – even on US and Israeli terms. They have celebrated assassinating Iran’s supreme leader; their offensive has also killed more than 1,000 civilians so far, including scores of children, according to a US-based rights group. As Iran retaliates, hoping America’s allies will try to rein it back, it is targeting US bases and civilian sites across the region – even in Oman, which was at the forefront of efforts to stave off the war. Gulf powers are increasingly irate, though wary of acting on threats to go beyond defensive action. Israel has ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians to leave a vast swathe of southern Lebanon, blaming Hezbollah’s retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Those who warned that the US-Israeli attack on Iran would lead to war engulfing the Middle East have proved, if anything, conservative in their predictions. A Hezbollah-launched drone hit an RAF airbase in Cyprus at the weekend. On Wednesday, Azerbaijan reported strikes on an airbase (though Iran denied responsibility, as it did over a missile fired towards Turkey). The day before, the US sank an Iranian warship 2,000 miles away, in waters close to Sri Lanka, as it returned from multilateral exercises with India – killing at least 87 people. And governments around the world face soaring energy prices and rattled markets thanks to Iran’s chokehold on the strait of Hormuz.
