Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.

Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.

Trump is a man without a plan. He hasn’t the foggiest what to do next in Iran, deluding himself that he is in control of events. The more the US and Israel batter Tehran and other cities, the more defiant is the odious, unvanquished Islamic regime. US regional bases and Gulf Arab partners are sustaining significant damage from retaliatory strikes.

Iran has succeeded in closing (and is now reportedly mining) the strait of Hormuz, which Trump, astonishingly, failed to defend. Rising oil and gas prices are driving a global energy shock that harms international trade, fuels inflation and creates food and medicine shortages. Poorer countries will suffer most. But few will escape the Trump plague. He’s the new Covid.

Netanyahu’s worst instincts have free rein as Trump flounders. Unceasing, disproportionate Israeli air attacks are hitting Iranian homes, utilities, banks, cultural heritage sites and mosques. The attacks are said to be counterproductively rallying nationalist support for the regime.

In Lebanon, it’s the same criminal story: civilians killed, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, destruction, occupation – all supposedly necessary to smash Hezbollah terror. But this is something worse: it’s state terror. Compare it with unchecked........

© The Guardian