Ever since the massive but ineffective Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel last weekend, Britain, the United States and other allies have been urging Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to de-escalate and show restraint. As President Biden put it, Israel should just “take the win” of repelling the assault without loss of life – and with active help from what would once have been an unlikely alliance of the US, UK, France, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu has showily rejected that advice given to him face-to-face by British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron and down the hotline by the president of the United States.

Overnight there were strikes at a military base in Isfahan – a historic former capital of Iran and a Unesco world heritage site but, more pertinently, also the location of a nuclear development site. There are further reports of limited strikes in Tabriz and on air defence systems in southern Syria.

This latest military action is probably best seen as a carefully calibrated – and initially successful – attempt by Netanyahu to preserve his position at the head of the Israeli government. He has pleased no one........

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