The Israeli device attacks make the world a more dangerous place for us all

THE detonation of hundreds of pagers, and dozens of walkie-talkies, used by Hezbollah leaders and associates across Lebanon, killing at least 20 and injuring 450, was a daring and high-risk attack by Israel.

- Robert Fox

Some might call it foolhardy, because it opens the prospect of Israel now having to handle war on three fronts and an enraged Iran prepared to fight on even more — from Africa to southern and central Europe.

It is a situation in which the international club — the Nato and EU allies principally — appear to have declining leverage. Their leaders seem increasingly confused — and seem to be telling us that the strategic implications of what is going on in Israel, Lebanon and the region once called the Levant, and the deepening crisis in the Ukraine war, are being parked in the “too difficult” box next to their in-trays.

A symptom of this was the summit that never was between Joe Biden and his foreign affairs team and Sir Keir Starmer and his team at the White House last week. Allegedly they were to decide on letting Ukraine use airlaunched British, French and Italian Storm Shadow missiles to strike into Russia to prevent reinforcements and supplies getting to the main battle fronts around Kursk, just inside Russia, and the Donetsk salient in Ukraine.