The US and Israel started a war that is escalating rapidly, with repercussions beyond the region too<\/p>\n
There will be no quick or easy wins \u2013 even on US and Israeli terms. They have celebrated assassinating Iran\u2019s<\/a> 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<\/a>. As Iran retaliates, hoping America\u2019s allies will try to rein it back, it is targeting US bases and civilian sites across the region \u2013 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\u2019s retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> at the weekend. On Wednesday, Azerbaijan reported strikes<\/a> on an airbase (though Iran denied responsibility, as it did over a missile fired towards Turkey<\/a>). The day before, the US sank an Iranian warship<\/a> 2,000 miles away, in waters close to Sri Lanka, as it returned from multilateral exercises with India \u2013 killing at least 87 people. And governments around the world face soaring energy prices and rattled markets thanks to Iran\u2019s chokehold on the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US and Israel started a war that is escalating rapidly, with repercussions beyond the region too There will be no quick or easy wins \u2013 even on US and Israeli terms. They have celebrated assassinating Iran\u2019s supreme leader; their offensive has also killed more than 1,000 civilians so far, including scores of children, according … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}