One of my best friends is stuck in Dubai, caught by a war during what was supposed to be a couple of days' visit. He's sent home what to me looked like worrying videos of drones falling to earth after being taken out by interceptors. He's also sent photos enjoying an iced coffee downtown, reassuring me he feels perfectly safe.

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A newsroom colleague has had to delay travel plans now the normally highly convenient Canberra to Doha flight has become anything but. And the family of our beloved Winter Paralympian Michael Milton have been stranded "missile spotting" instead of being in Italy as he prepares to compete.

These are just grains of sand on a vast beach of inconveniences. But of course they are just that - inconveniences. Nothing compared to the impact on those under the falling bombs. People are losing their lives in the hundreds, including, tragically, scores of schoolchildren.

But this war's ripples are felt everywhere.

Petrol prices are surging. International travel has been thrown into chaos. Previously safe destinations are now marked off-limits.

And here in Canberra, people of Iranian heritage are desperately waiting for news of family and friends, frustrated by an almost complete lack of connectivity since the attacks began.

When Donald Trump returned to office I chose to limit my outrage to the things he did that affected me, deciding it would be too exhausting to react to everything he did in the service of culture wars or his own vanity.

The problem I'm finding with Trump's war on Iran is separating the gravely serious consequences - even knowing in the long-term they may be positive ones - from the unserious people behind them.

Take US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, a posturing culture warrior whose first big act in his job was to share classified information on a WhatsApp group to which he'd accidentally added a newspaper editor. Oh and change his department's name from Defense to War.

Now the US has entered a full-blown war, he's busy talking about how nation building is "woke" or bragging about US firepower like some amped-up gym bro.

"America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy," he said, aping the macho style characteristic of most in the Trump world.

The problem with the MAGA style of foreign policy is the bind it puts responsible nations like ours in. It would be easy enough to back a long-term ally ending one of the most despotic regimes in modern history in the old days of "rules-based order".

Instead our diplomatic position, and that of the likes of Canada, whose impressive Prime Minister Mark Carney was in Canberra yesterday, is to be as circumspect as our alliance with the Trump-brand US allows.

Countries like ours always want to be on the right side of history, and to be clear that is not being on the side of the Iranian regime, backers of terrorism and hellbent on the annihilation of Israel. But nor is it rushing headlong into war, especially one whose rationale has been almost impossible to pin down given the Trump administration's on-again, off-again relationship with "regime change".

Anthony Albanese joined Carney yesterday to talk up the need for "middle powers" like Canada and Australia to stand together and not kowtow to superpowers like the US, but neither would rule out joining the conflict.

With other European allies including France, Greece and the UK already sending military resources into the fray, we may find ourselves brought into this one well past the point of inconvenience.

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