The sight of rockets raining down on Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening was the clearest conceivable sign that the regional conflict so widely feared over the past year might finally erupt.

This is the second Iranian airstrike on Israel in less than six months, but last time there was a few days’ notice; the much slower drones and cruise missiles arrived first, and the main target was a military base in the underpopulated Negev Desert.

This time the ballistic missiles arrived first at the end of a 12-minute flight time and the targets appear to include dense urban areas. Israeli officials were quoted in the local press as describing the attack as an Iranian declaration of war.

Despite the fact that there were no casualties, the fact that cities were targeted will be crucial to Israel’s response. After the Iranian attack in April, the reprisal was largely performative. The only target hit inside Iran was an air defense post at a military base near Isfahan.

After Israeli citizens were so clearly threatened on Tuesday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu can be expected to respond in a much more comprehensive manner. The options will already be in place, ready to be selected by the War Cabinet, and the list of targets is expected to be substantial. It could include Iran’s nuclear facilities.

On Tuesday, it was the White House that first sounded the alarm about the impending Iranian missile launch, presumably with the intention of depriving the attack of its element of surprise and with the vague hope of deterring it. Because this failed, the US briefing to journalists before the launch had the residual political benefit of showing that Washington was at least not surprised.

Despite all the dangers this attack poses for the Middle East, it also threatens to have a significant impact on American politics, five weeks before the sharp presidential election, in which Donald Trump has tried to put the government led by Joe Biden in the spotlight to take. and Kamala Harris equally unfortunate from the depths on the world stage.

The US has been unable to reach a deal on hostages for peace in Gaza for months, and its attempts with France to negotiate a ceasefire at last week’s UN General Assembly have been disappointing to say the least. also failed. The Israeli response came Friday, shortly after Netanyahu addressed the UN from New York on the airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader and Iran’s leading partner in the region, Hassan Nasrallah. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Tuesday night’s rocket attack was in retaliation for Nasrallah’s death and for the late July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was a guest in Tehran.

Since the Gaza war broke out on October 7 last year, Biden officials have taken credit for preventing the violence from becoming a regional conflict. That claim no longer has any weight.

After the latest Iranian missile attack on Israel in April, the administration urged restraint toward Israel in its response, using U.S. air defense support to convince Netanyahu to “achieve victory” by shooting down nearly all incoming projectiles. This time, the US had reportedly indicated to Tehran that in the event of a second Iranian attack, it would not and could not be a restraining influence.

The constraining forces in the Middle East are weakening by the day. Politically, the Biden administration cannot be seen as tying Israel’s hands in the face of an Iranian attack on Israeli cities. The Iranian regime (particularly the IRGC) is feeling pressure to show its regional allies and associates, from Hezbollah to the Houthis in Yemen, that it is not a weakling, but a regional power of substance, the leader of the ‘axis of resists’. ”.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has a free hand. With Iranian missiles over Tel Aviv, it is much harder for Washington to influence his actions, and much harder for the prime minister’s opponents to call for his ouster.

Today, Netanyahu is also significantly closer to his long-standing ambition: to engage the US in a war against Iran that will destroy its nuclear program, which is now close to the capacity to make a weapon after the collapse of the multilateral agreement from 2015, the JCPOA, which kept the program within bounds.

According to the latest reports on Tuesday evening, the Iranian missiles had caused minimal injuries, but raised the specter of what could happen in the coming years: missiles 12 minutes away from Israel, carrying nuclear warheads.

Israel’s wars of destruction against its regional enemies, first Hamas and then Hezbollah, are sure to add urgency to the arguments of Iran hawks that only a nuclear weapon can keep the country safe and powerful. In turn, the fear that these arguments will prevail in Tehran will fuel calls in Israel for a preventive war.

In such perilous times, the region has historically looked to Washington to contain and reverse the logic of escalation. But the man currently occupying the Oval Office is a lame-duck president who has been ignored to the point of humiliation in recent months by the US’s closest ally in the Middle East.

There have been voices within the American defense establishment for some time calling on the US to take preventive action against Iran’s nuclear program. These will now increase in an effort to influence a president who has vowed to defend Israel against the Iranian threat.

The Biden administration has generally been cautious when it comes to military ventures abroad, and Harris is expected to follow a similar path, with less sentimental attachment to Israel. But escalating violence in the Middle East will hurt her chances of succeeding Biden in the White House and bring closer the prospect of the return of the biggest wild card of them all, Donald Trump.