US–Israel strikes on Iran have already started widening into a regional war, and the spillover is happening fast. Right, so Donald Trump has ordered the United States into strikes on Iran, Israel has joined in, and Tehran has been hit, and the pretence of a tidy, controlled event is already dead. Sirens have been sounding in Israel, a state of emergency has been declared there, and that is what “backfires already” looks like though isn’t it: once you hit a country like Iran, you don’t get to dictate the reply, the timing, or the shape of the region’s next forty-eight hours. A statement from Donald Trump has put the scale on record in his own words, because he is calling it “major combat operations” and saying the objective is to eliminate what he calls “imminent threats” from Iran. He is talking about destroying missiles, razing an industry, anni ...