There are really two wars in the Middle East, and only one of them is paused.

The US-Iran war has been stuck in a ragged ceasefire for more than a month, with the participants only indulging in occasional tit-for-tat strikes that Donald Trump likes to call ‘‘love taps’’: fewer than five killed.

Israel was part of that war too in March, dropping thousands of bombs on Iran, but Trump then told Israel’s Prime Minister Binyanmin Netanyahu to observe the ceasefire with Iran and he actually did.

However, he went right on bombing Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based organisation that acts as Iran’s proxy in the country, even attacking Israel on Iran’s behalf.

It’s an odd alliance, based only on the fact that both Iran (92 million people) and the minority of Lebanese who support Hezbollah (fewer than 2 million) follow the same Shia strand of Islam.

The real attraction for both groups, probably, is that Shiism is emotionally all about victimhood.…