Israel and Iran have just delivered the US election’s ‘October surprise’

FOR the past year, the Biden administration has struggled to prevent a regional war in the Middle East, fearing that it might draw in the United States or wreak havoc on the world economy.

This policy is now very close to failing. For the second time this year, Iran has fired missiles at Israel, and the US has helped Israel to shoot the missiles down. Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, has promised that there will be “severe consequences” for Iran and has said that the US will “work with Israel” to ensure that this is the case. That sounds ominously like a threat of joint US-Israeli military action against Iran.

In April, Israel was persuaded to limit its retaliation to a level that the Iranians could tacitly accept – and the tit-for-tat exchange stopped. This time around, it seems much less likely that the exchange of blows between Iran and Israel can be prevented from escalating further.