MARK ALMOND: The march to war in the Middle East feels almost unstoppable and Britain will be drawn in. But there is one slim hope…

When America’s aging president was confronted with the slaughter of American soldiers in a cold-blooded surprise attack on a military base in the Middle East, he lived up to his tough reputation.

He withdrew his troops to a safe distance – before punishing the Islamic radicals with a brutal bombardment.

But that president was not Joe Biden. It was 1983 and Ronald Reagan, then 72, used airstrikes and the devastating firepower of the battleship USS Missouri to inflict crushing reprisals on the Lebanese terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 241 American personnel in Beirut.

Unlike Biden, Reagan was regarded by friend and foe as a sharpshooter who does not shy away from a fight. He was popular, led a booming economy and was the leader of an undisputed superpower. He also enjoyed the confidence of his European allies and did not face an upcoming election.

None of these things are true for Biden, which means it will be much more difficult for him to retaliate effectively and proportionately after Saturday’s horrific attack on a US service base in northeastern Jordan, close to the Syrian border, which killed three soldiers died and more than 34 were injured, many with traumatic brain injuries.

The president, now 81, is no Western Reaganite hero. He is increasingly seen as an overbearing weakling, bullied by everyone from Republicans to the revanchist Kremlin. And like all weaklings, he lacks the authority to push back his enemies through threats alone. He has two options: run away or lash out.

While Reagan could have acted wisely in response to the suicide bombing of the Beirut barracks by one of the first Islamic jihadist groups, the pressure on Biden is greater because of his long and naive record in the field of Iranian appeasement. The current crisis is the inevitable result.

To be fair, Biden is struggling to deal with a much more complex geopolitical picture than Reagan did during the Cold War. Then Washington controlled its allies, as did Moscow. Now America’s friends, like Israel, and its enemies, including Iran, are pursuing their own goals.

That makes it harder to withdraw U.S. troops from the region if the militants step up their terror attacks — perhaps by attacking U.S. citizens on their own soil. But if Biden continues with ineffective “punitive strikes” against the Islamists, he will do little but waste expensive ammunition.

This is what George W. Bush once derided as “firing a million-dollar missile at the back of a ten-dollar camel” – before wasting trillions doing just that in Iraq.

Lashing out without a long-term goal in mind will ultimately make America look powerless — and that’s something Biden can’t afford when he’s already trailing his presidential challenger, Donald Trump, in many polls.

That leaves him with one option: massive retaliation. But against whom? The group claiming responsibility for the murderous attack on a military base known as Tower 22 calls itself “Islamic Resistance in Iraq.” Despite denials from Tehran, this is almost certainly a proxy brigade for the regime in Iran.

The carnage at the US base, reportedly caused by a drone bomb targeting a barracks, suggests advanced technology and weapons were involved.

Such an attack must be meticulously planned. This is an echo of another Reagan-era bombing of the US embassy in Lebanon, which was rehearsed using a complete mock-up of the target site – paid for and built by Iran.

The head of the Republican opposition in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has called on Biden to “exert American force to force Iran to change its behavior.”

His fellow Republican senator, Tom Cotton, went even further: “The only response to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces. Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward.”

Trump has been quick to blame the Biden administration for the crisis: “Three years ago, Iran was weak, broke and completely under control,” he wrote. “Then Joe Biden came in and gave Iran billions of dollars, which the regime has used to sow bloodshed.”

Trump has a tendency to exaggerate, but in this case he has a point. Since 2021, Iran has benefited an estimated $100 billion (£79 billion), mainly due to the failure to enforce US oil sanctions.

There is also a $10 billion sanctions waiver, paid last November as part of a deal under which Tehran pledged not to develop a nuclear bomb, and $6 billion in cash paid as ransom for the release of American hostages.

Both Democrats and Republicans have tried to control Iran using money as a weapon. But both political parties have discovered to their frustration that neither paying bribes nor blocking payments has worked.

Iran wants money – and the mullahs will accept financial incentives if offered. But Tehran is ruled by religious fundamentalists who are not primarily motivated by wealth.

A spokesman for the Islamists who attacked Tower 22 summed up their thinking: “We are not concerned that the US will respond. Martyrdom is our price.”

In such a context, nothing could be more terrifying to the West and their moderate allies in the Middle East, such as Jordan’s King Abdullah II, than the prospect of an ayatollah’s thumb on the nuclear red button.

So on the one hand we see an angry America, led by a weak president who risks launching a massive escalation because he is afraid to do something different.

And on the other side are the terrorist death cults, manipulated by fanatical Iranian mullahs, who are actively seeking an apocalyptic confrontation with a superpower they call the Great Satan. The march towards war feels almost unstoppable.

Britain, and perhaps our European allies in NATO, will be involved, as much as we don’t want it to be. For example, we share a base in Bahrain with the US Navy, and we are already engaged in retaliatory actions against the Houthis in Yemen. We will have little choice but to stand shoulder to shoulder with Washington.

Meanwhile, anything that hurts the US is good for Moscow’s war against Ukraine, especially since a conflict in the Middle East will increase the value of Russian oil exports. And Beijing will be happy if American attention is diverted from Chinese tensions with Taiwan.

There is one small hope. The Tower 22 attack appears to be a new extension of the war in the Gaza Strip, just like the Houthi missile and the drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. If Israel and the Palestinians could agree to a ceasefire, Islamic terrorist attacks on American personnel could stop.

That would allow Biden to claim victory, just as Reagan did forty years ago.

But a peace deal in Gaza cannot be achieved without the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas. And even then, there are few signs that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would consider anything other than the total surrender of Hamas. So don’t count on it.

An all-out war between America and Iran and its allies could be postponed by a ceasefire in Gaza. But the tinderbox that is the Middle East will still be vulnerable to the next spark, and could soon engulf the world.