The Middle East, the world, not for the first time in these long six months, has been holding its breath. Ever since Iran fired 300 hundred rockets into Israel, itself a response to the Israel’s killing of several senior Iranian military figures in Damascus, that dreaded word “escalation” has haunted the conversation, the grim realisation that the region, maybe more than the region, is just one mistake, one miscalculation away from all out war in every direction.

Overnight, the promised Israeli retaliation to the Iranian attack came, with missle attacks in the heart of Iran itself, in the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz.

Is this it? Can we exhale again? And for how long?

Editor: Tom Hughes

Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus

Producers: Laura FitzPatrick

Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell

Video Production: Rory Symon & Arvind Badewal

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