Reverberations of war: Fears of a wider regional escalation miss the fact it is already happening

After he came to office, President Biden's orders to his foreign policy staff were to "keep the Middle East off my desk". The idea was that the Arab case was largely closed.

- Nesrine Malik

"The Middle East is quieter today than it has been in decades," said the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a fate-tempting speech a week before the Hamas attacks.

The plan was to "ultimately integrate" the region by encouraging further normalisation between Arab states and Israel, thereby isolating and taming Iran. It hasn't worked. The 7 October attacks put the Middle East back on Biden's desk. Arab countries have a habit of behaving in ways dictated by domestic calculations and regional ambitions rather than western foreign policy priorities.

The result is that all bets are off. And in a matter of weeks the Middle East and wider Arab world have become drawn into the war in a way that has not been met by appropriate action by the US and other Israeli allies.

Underpinning the paralysis is a linchpin of the US's Middle East foreign policy: that Israel is the US's key security partner in the region, and that reconsidering its arming and support is therefore out of the question.

The cost of this logic is high, and escalating. The talk is of "fears of a wider war in the Middle East", but the truth is that war is already here. It has now spilled into Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.