You have only to consider the list of countries pleading with their citizens to get “the hell out of Lebanon” (the less than diplomatic words of one White House source) to recognise how the wider world sees Israel’s war for Gaza, and the recent assassinations of key enemy figures, as almost bound to produce the kind of Mideast conflagration feared for months. “One way or another, yes we see conflict,” said that source, “but winnable it is not.”

That hard-nosed judgement raises questions surely for the military and the political class in Washington, think Whitehall too, even Paris. Yet that has not stopped such allies of Israel from stepping in militarily to support the government of Benjamin Netanyahu as he stares at conflict that could engulf the region, indeed some in his leadership, according to American sources, “seem to want to bring it on, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.”

From Ground Zero at the Pentagon in Washington, to MI5 Intelligence at the MOD in London, to the Balardgon, as the French Defence Ministry is nicknamed, the mobilisation orders were already given. The call-ups signalled warships and aircraft, backed by thousands of troops, moved into position not just to evacuate citizens — but to help defend Israel if need be, from Iran and its surrogates such as the formidable Hezbollah military in Lebanon.

“What’s clear to some of us is that we have been shoe-horned by the Israelis into a position where it can become our war too, when Iran and its proxies, take on Israel,” concluded one Pentagon planner, who drew a sober bottom line, revealing that Israel did not warn Washington of the targeted killings of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut and the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

“Screw all those demands we made, for Israeli restraint, and a ceasefire,” he said, in unrestrained terms himself. “The Israeli leadership under Bibi Netanyahu has driven us into a cul-de-sac, and there’s no easy reverse.”

Indeed it seems not, and the new British government faces the same straitjacket, whatever its other priorities at home given the riots of recent days and warnings from senior MOD officials that the country is not prepared for “conflict on any scale.”

There is a political commitment at work. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been vocal about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” telling Netanyahu that he wanted to “deepen ties between Britain and Israel” in a conversation after his election in July.

But there’s also the military alliance, so evident back in April when the United States, Britain and France led an extraordinary team effort, helping Israel intercept more than 99 percent of 300-plus drones launched by Iran towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Royal Air Force jets were deployed in Iraq and Syria to stop “any airborne attacks” within range while US forces helped Israel down “nearly all” the incoming drones and missiles.

Now the Biden administration, in concert with the British and the French again, has moved aircraft and ballistic missile defence destroyers into position. Starmer’s government sent air force jets and air refuelling tankers to the region, alongside the thousand-plus special forces  dispatched to the RAF base in Cyprus. Hundreds more servicemen and women were placed on alert back home to deploy at short notice.

All of this so represents proof of the common front that emerged from that weekend of Iranian drones heading to Jerusalem in April. “Our joint commitment to Israel is ironclad,” said President Biden at the time. To which Netanyahu added: “Together we will win.”

But hold on. Listen in to the military establishment in Washington, the MOD in London, and the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, and what you hear is the joint belief that Netanyahu’s war cannot be won, starting in Gaza, extending into Lebanon, let alone considering Iran, Syria, Yemen and its proxies there.

Israeli commanders have been digesting for the military realpolitik of this conflict, call it facts on the ground, 10 months in, diagnosing time and again that they needed to go back into areas of Gaza supposedly cleared of Hamas forces, in many areas the enemy’s fighters re-establishing control up from the Gaza Metro, the vast tunnel network that boasts sanctuary and supply lines. Then they have absorbed the latest intelligence on the number of men and the weapons behind Hezbollah in Lebanon, suggesting Israel faces an enemy so much more prepared than the last time they fought a war, in 2006.

Factor in exhaustion within the Israeli Defence Force, in many cases reservists now months away from families and jobs, and the prognosis is clear. In the words of that White House  source, “Netanyahu sells the idea of total victory when his own commanders, let alone ours, tell him it ain’t happening.”

All of which helps explain why, even as Israel’s allies prepared for regional war, the Biden administration persists in diplomatic attempts to cajole Israel and Hamas to negotiations.

“We’re as close as we think we have ever been to a ceasefire deal,” said John Kirby, the National Security Council’s co-ordinator in Washington. To which an Israeli government source suggested, with barely-disguised irony, that was “news” to Netanyahu, and his team.

Reality is that Netanyahu, as I have argued in these pages, has been paying lip service, little more, to the repeated demands of the United States, and others, for restraint in this conflict and that negotiating track.

The assassinations in Beirut and Tehran spoke volumes about Bibi’s sense of unilateral action, not least because the killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Iran removed the lead figure in any negotiations with Hamas, and his chosen successor, Yahya Sinwar, is Gaza’s supreme commander, indeed the architect of the bloodthirsty invasion of Israel last October. In short, that assassination has probably strengthened the hand of the Hamas leader, aka mass murderer, not weakened him.

“The longer this goes, and the further Netanyahu goes, we surely have to be asking questions of ourselves, In Washington and London, and Paris, the whys and wherefores of what we are doing in the region militarily, and our support for his Israel,” concluded that Pentagon source.

It was a dilemma writ large on the very day of the latest Israeli air strike hitting a school in Gaza, and the familiar claims and counter-claims that now accompany this war. This was a displacement centre for refugees, says Hamas: a hideout for Hamas fighters according to the Israelis. Amid the international outrage over the dozens killed, Washington announced a further 3.5 billion dollars for Israel to use on US-made weapons and military equipment.