MARK ALMOND: The world stands on the brink of a major war… and terrifyingly there’s no one to de-escalate it

Today, the world is on the brink of a major war. First, an Israeli missile strike killed a top Hezbollah military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut.

Early yesterday morning, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in a precision airstrike on an apartment building in Tehran.

These two surgical assassinations mark a major escalation in Israel’s twin conflicts with its neighbors — Lebanon to the north and the Palestinians to the south. They effectively end any chance of a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza.

Now Iran, which backs 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 destruction of Haniyeh on Iranian soil as a deep humiliation that can only be atoned for by the shedding of Israeli blood.

Khamenei, who had met the Hamas leader just hours earlier, described the terrorist executioner as “a dear guest in our home,” adding: “We consider his revenge our duty.”

Haniyeh had flown to Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. In a region where “face” and reputation are so highly prized, the Iranian state knows it has little choice but to respond in kind.

The likelihood of the war spreading across the Middle East and beyond has also increased due to the United States’ lack of interest.

The White House appears disinclined to uphold the “pax Americana” that has protected the West and its interests for decades, while Joe Biden is widely seen as a lame duck in the final months of his presidency.

Yesterday’s airstrike — believed to have been masterminded by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency from Jerusalem — took place at 2 a.m. in Tehran.

But it was still the middle of the evening in Washington DC and the White House still had plenty of time to respond.

The fact that neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris deigned to speak suggests that Washington is either asleep, on summer vacation, on autopilot, or unwilling to take action in an election year. All of these factors are equally dangerous.

Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed at a loss for words when interviewed a few hours later during a visit to Singapore.

“This is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very difficult to speculate,” he sputtered.

What now? After the nine-month siege of Gaza, Hamas is — undoubtedly — no longer able to inflict much more pain on Israel.

But Hezbollah, based in Lebanon north of Israel, managed to bring Israel to a stalemate as late as 2006.

The group still maintains a large arsenal of Iranian-supplied missiles and drones.

It seems likely that Iran could also fire cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel, in a repeat of April’s Operation True Promise, a coordinated attack involving more than 300 missiles (itself in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus).

But it is Iranian forces in the rest of the Middle East that make an international conflict so frighteningly likely.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels are burdening the West with military resources in the Red Sea by launching drone attacks on commercial shipping and directly attacking US and Royal Navy ships.

The Houthis have also vowed to carry out airstrikes on Israel itself, in response to attacks from Jerusalem on Houthis-controlled territory in Yemen.

Then there are Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq and Syria, who recently attacked Washington’s few remaining air bases in the region.

Perhaps Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded that Israel can handle any escalation of the conflicts now threatening his country.

In an attempt to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is repeating the tactic that successfully neutralized al-Qaeda as a global threat: by hunting down and destroying its leaders.

But Israel, of all countries, should know that wars of attrition are not won by killing alone.

Israel assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin in 2004, but the threat from Hamas has continued to grow.

The danger for Netanyahu and Israel is that the country could be drawn into a larger, broader, multi-front war. And if that happens, the consequences will be very hard to predict.

In terms of military means, Israel – with American support – appears well positioned to survive that conflict.

While US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has previously said that America wants to cool the temperature in the Middle East, Washington has been adamant in insisting that the US military will come to Israel’s aid if it is attacked by Iran, as it did when Tehran launched a massive drone and missile attack in April.

But it remains to be seen how many civilian casualties and economic damage the Israeli people are willing to endure before they oust Netanyahu and sue for peace.

A growing conflict would put Britain in a dire position.

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ordered British fighter jets in Cyprus to shoot down Iranian drones heading for Israel in a show of support for America and Israel. Sir Keir Starmer is likely to do the same.

But would Britain put troops on the ground if America and Israel asked for military help? Surely that would not make Britain, and British interests abroad, a target for Iran’s allies?

What would our involvement mean for Britain’s relations with our European neighbours, some of whom have been loud and clear in their support for Palestinian civilians caught up in the Gaza conflict?

And how would it affect our relationship with NATO ally Turkey, which has increasingly supported Hamas. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has even threatened to send troops to Palestine to support Hamas?

Russia’s involvement in the conflict must also be taken into consideration.

Moscow has long been an ally of Iran, which has supplied drones and missiles to the war in Ukraine. It also has a large military presence in Syria, with Russia’s only military base on the Mediterranean.

The Kremlin, moreover, remains a master of destabilizing tactics, using social media rumors and “useful idiots” in rival states to sow social unrest and division.

It is not yet time for sandbags in Britain and the West. But the temperature in the Middle East is rising by the day — and the usual mechanisms for de-escalation and negotiation seem dangerously absent.

Who knows how and where this will end?

This is a very, very bad time to discover a power vacuum in Washington.