I’d like now to turn to the geopolitical questions at stake in the war in Israel. It may never be entirely clear why Hamas decided to plan last weekend’s assault, but it’s likely that factors distant from Israel’s borders came into play. Richard Kemp urges us to look as far afield as Moscow, and Vladimir Putin’s failure to subdue Ukraine:

Unwilling to take the fight directly to NATO, instead, Putin has been fomenting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia and Kosovo, in West Africa, and now in Israel. . . . Just as Russia used Iran to supply large numbers of drones to attack Ukrainian civilians, it is now using Iran to encourage and enable these attacks in Israel. Iran is of course a more than willing partner whose leaders have repeatedly sworn death to Israel and America; as are its proxies in Gaza and also in Lebanon.

Iran has long been directing, training, funding, and supplying weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as well as in Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. Moscow too has maintained and developed connections with Palestinian terrorist groups and individual extremists, going back to Soviet days, when Putin himself as a KGB officer was dealing with Middle East terrorists, including during his time in Dresden.

Hamas leaders, including the terrorist boss Ismail Haniyeh, have made a number of visits to Moscow since the Ukraine war began, meeting with senior government officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. A delegation from their Gaza terrorist bedfellows, Islamic Jihad, led by its chief, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, also visited Moscow in March. Likewise, leaders of another Iranian proxy, Lebanese Hizballah, have been welcome guests in Moscow.

Turning back to the Jewish state and its immediate environs, Kemp adds another critical observation:

Israel cannot afford to show any weakness in this dire situation. Aside from the overriding need to protect its own people, other countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE, depend on Israeli strength.

While the far left and the extreme right have responded with frenzied outrage to Israel’s attacks on Iran, middle-of-the-road, establishment types have expressed similar sentiments, only in more measured tones. These think-tankers and former officials generally believe that Israeli military action, rather than nuclear-armed murderous fanatics, is the worst possible outcome. Garry Kasparov examines this mode of thinking:

Now that the Islamic Republic is severely weakened, the alarmist foreign-policy commentariat is apprising us of the unacceptable risks, raising their well-worn red flags. (Or should I say white flags?) “Escalation!” “Global war!” And the ultimate enemy of the status quo: “regime change!”

Under President Obama, American officials frequently stared down the nastiest offenders in the international rogues’ gallery and insisted that there was “no military solution.” “No military solution” might sound nice to enlightened ears. Unfortunately, it’s a meaningless slogan. Tellingly, Russian officials repeat it all the time too. . . . But Russia does believe there are military solutions to its problems—ask any Ukrainian, Syrian, or Georgian. Yet too many in Washington remain determined to fight armed marauders with flowery words.

If you are worried about innocent people being killed, . . . spare a thought for the millions of Iranians who face imprisonment, torture, or death if they dare deviate from the strict precepts of the Islamic Revolution. Or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians whose murder Iran was an accomplice to. Or the Ukrainian civilians who have found themselves on the receiving end of over 8,000 Iranian-made suicide drones over the past three years. Or the scores of Argentine Jews blown up in a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994 without even the thinnest of martial pretexts.

The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy was quick and confident in his pronouncement that Israel’s operation in Iran “risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America.” Maybe. But a regional war was already underway before Israel struck last week. Iran was already supporting the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Russia in Ukraine. Israel is simply moving things toward a more decisive conclusion.

Perhaps Murphy and his ilk dread most being proved wrong—which they will be if, in a few weeks’ time, their apocalyptic predictions haven’t come true, and the Middle East, though still troubled, is a safter place.