Is a wider war in the Middle East unavoidable?

If Israel goes ahead with its threatened/promised ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza, will this make it inevitable that it will then become a wider and even more dangerous Middle East conflict with more countries and anti-Israel factions joining in? By the sound of the warnings from Iran and others, it would seem this cannot be avoided which means the US will become heavily involved. It would, in other words, be a calamity for the region. But is it inevitable? Does Iran really want to clash in direct conflict with Israel and the United States. Iran would lose. The ayatollahs will be weighing all this up and I can't see them wanting to get involved in a full-scale war. Far more likely is that the Quds Force, the 5,000-strong overseas wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will mount a series of attacks on American troops in Iraq and elsewhere to try and divert US attention away from the Israel/Gaza war. There have alredy been rocket attacks. The Pentagon seems to have come to that conclusion because one aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, bound for the eastern Mediterranean has been diverted to the Gulf region, and anti-missile batteries have also been sent to the area to protect against missiles from Iran. Hezbollah, fanatically anti-Israel, will not be able to rerist the temptation to attack Israel in force from the north to join Hamas but even they might be cautious about launching a massive missile attack because they know Israel will retaliate on a huge scale. Despite being caught by surprise by the Hamas strikes on October 7, the Israeli military capabilities should never be underestimated by Israel's enemies. So I suspect Tehran and Hezbollah and other potential anti-Israel factions will be thinking carefully about far to get involved.