Middle East escalation bodes ill for the world

The assault on Iran marks a decisive moment in geopolitics. It's also bound to upend the global economy and create wide uncertainty about what comes next

- 

A president who built his career on not repeating his predecessors’ foreign-policy errors now seems determined to repeat them.

porter, has accused him of betrayal. Tucker Carlson, whose influence over the Maga base rivals Trump's own, has been scathing.

Nor is the case easily made that Iran is an imminent threat to the American homeland. Trump himself was adamant that he destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme with the B2 bomber strikes last year. Few experts believed that Iran posed anything close to an imminent threat to the US.

Unthinkable too is that Trump and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu hold much regard for Iranian human rights. Any pretence of that went up in smoke with the bombing of a girls' elementary school in Minab killing 165, many of them young pupils.

More likely is that this is just a continuation of Israel dictating US foreign policy.

Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, even said as much when he admitted the attacks were preempted by Israel. Netanyahu has made no secret of his determination to enact regime change in Iran and cement Israel’s place as the regional hegemon. He seems to have persuaded Trump to do this now, given the mullahs were at their weakest in decades.