risk 3 ?

It's impossible to assess any accurate position through the hail of non-diplomacy in current US interactions related to the Middle East. The so-called president is blasting out on twitter and the White House Press Office is blustering about his words. More ridiculous than episodes of a box set.

Now we are also waiting for Theresa May to describe a UK position and whether or not Parliament gets to vote on any action. Even that's partly about whether the Tories lose a vote in the house.

Meanwhile, like one of those movies, the Russians appear to have access to the tunnel hangars at the airfield near Latakia, Syria as well as the Syrian owned S-400 missiles which have an air defence range beyond Cyprus. They are surface to air, but there's be other options around.

The American 6th Fleet is based in Naples, so we may have a lull whilst available missile carrying ships chug into the area. I took a look and there seems to be about half a dozen U.S. warships around the Mediterranean, although any aircraft carriers would probably need to move across from Naval Station Norfolk, in Virginia, although I reckon this would take about 17 days in a fleet formation.

The whole Syrian regime may be horrendous, but missile escalation didn't work for the last Trump endeavour. 59 missiles used yet the runways were tokenistically back in use the next day. And it's not just one airfield. They are scattered all over Syria and generally well-stocked with planes and armaments.

I generated a quick indicative list and although there's still some ageing MIGs active, there's also a fair few modern planes.

However despicable the actions of Syria's tyrant, there needs to be a plan above gesture politics for this knife edge.