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Many of the media headlines reporting on Israel’s air strikes on Iran in the middle of the night last night say something along the lines of “could lead to an escalation of the regional war.” I have news for everybody: World War III has been underway at least since October 7 of last year, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. The only question is whether its scale and level of intensity will rise to the level of the previous two world wars. But let’s look at some facts.

Item: Last week it was reported that Russia has provided targeting information to the Houthis in Yemen.

Item: North Korea has sent several thousand troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine.

Item: China has recently engaged in what appears to be a dress rehearsal for a blockade of Taiwan, practicing a full-scale naval encirclement of what I’m going to back to calling Free China.

Regarding Israel’s strike on Iran, it appears Israel has acceded to American demands that it not strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, or its important oil infrastructure. This likely reflects not merely the usual timorousness of Democratic foreign and defense policy elites, but the more proximate driver of the upcoming election. Democrats are terrified that any escalation of the Middle East front will diminish further Kamala Harris’s chances of winning.

The Wall Street Journal reports this curious angle:

Hours before the attack began, Israel alerted the U.S. and several Arab-world and European capitals about the nature and scope of the attack, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials in some of those countries then alerted Iran.

Israel’s prime minister’s office later said the idea that it informed Iran about the nature or timing of the attack was “false and absurd.”

Notice that this doesn’t say that Israel rules out that that the United States might be one of the “other countries” that alerted Iran.

More significant is that Israel’s attack was carried out with F-35 fighters. There has long been speculation that Israel would have difficulty striking deep into Iran from the air. But they just showed they can.