As expected, Friday night’s US strikes were carefully calibrated, going further than the US has gone in Iraq and Syria in recent months - but stopping short of directly attacking Iran, the power Washington says is behind much of the Middle East’s recent instability.

Is a wider conflagration in the region now more likely - or are there other ways out of what the US has described as this “dangerous moment”?

And is a ceasefire in Gaza one of those ways?

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