The ancient city of Tyre, a Phoenician jewel that once defied Alexander the Great, is now rubble beneath Israeli bombs. That Iran warned this would happen is irrelevant: the Islamic Republic is a paper tiger, its threats as hollow as the promises of the late Ottoman Empire. What matters is that the UK embassy staff were evacuated, a cowardly retreat that reeks of the appeasement we saw in the 1930s.
The Western world is sleepwalking into a catastrophe, clutching its pearls while the Middle East burns. This is not a conflict; it is a collapse of order, a return to the tribal wars of antiquity. The question is not whether Iran will retaliate but whether the civilised world remembers how to fight back.
