The US may be pivoting eastward in an attempt to answer the rise of China. The EU may be gazing inward in its tortured attempts to emerge from the eurozone crisis. But the Middle East – rarely more combustible than now – will not be wished away by inertia or introversion. It will continue to monopolise the firefighting capacity of world powers throughout 2013 and beyond.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now so close to being made insoluble – at least within the two-states framework the international community set but the US declines to press on its Israeli ally – that it requires separate consideration. As of now, Syria is the most incendiary of the region’s tinderboxes.

More than 21 months after the uprising started against Bashar al-Assad, and then turned into an insurgency to counter savage repression, the regime is engaged in a rearguard action, punctuated by punitive air strikes. The rebels have momentum and tactical agility. Whether or not western powers give them the heavy weapons they need to counter the regime’s still far superior firepower, the Assads are finished.