FROM OUR SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE CORRESPONDENT IN WASHINGTON DC

“IT MAYBE THAT Iran is the immediate string-puller but the timing of all this Hamas stuff leads some of us to believe this is a second front designed to further drain already stretched American resources. If it isn’t, Putin’s a lucky man.”

The security expert I met, who’s based in the US capital, and is close to the administration, stared bitterly into his Vodka Martini and pulled out the olive.

“We are down to our barrel bottom for the Ukraine war, and now this turns up and Biden has to pledge more aid. If one more thing happens, I will eat this olive, and I hate olives.”

He drank his Martini and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I don’t like coincidences,” he said, leaving the bar, and the olive, and the tab, to me