Wars in Iran and Ukraine are increasingly overlapping while also expanding, as the U.S. mulls whether to make another attempt at delivering a knockout blow against Tehran.
Last weekend, Ukraine announced that it attacked an Iranian cargo ship ferrying military supplies between Iran and Russia in the Caspian Sea. Iran insisted it’s not involved in Russia’s war on Ukraine, though Kyiv has said Tehran is supplying drones to its ally.
Days later, drones hit liquid natural gas tankers at a port on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, marking the first time the country had been targeted during the Iran war and threatening the Suez Canal’s status as a safe route to get oil out of the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said it formed a military coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea as Iran-backed Houthi rebels attack ships using the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which the kingdom has relied on to export its oil and bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Riyadh said 14 countries offered support for the coalition, including Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria and several other Arab and African nations.
Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, pointed out in a note on Friday that Iran and its allies have struck or threatened nearly every country in the region since the war began in February.
“Egypt was the largest one still untouched, and it had worked to stay that way, keeping open relations with both Washington and Tehran,” he added. “Neutrality did not exempt it.”
The Mediterranean attack, which Egypt attributed to Iran, may impact European gas prices, shipping rates, and insurance costs, according to Alamariu.
That’s as Iran demanded European countries hold Ukraine accountable for its attack on the ship in the Caspian Sea.
“The Iran and Ukraine wars may be connecting,” he warned. “A Ukrainian strike in the Caspian Sea was followed within days by burning gas ships on the Mediterranean. It may not be coincidental, there is a tail risk of some convergence between the two conflicts.”
Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert at the think tank SWP Berlin, also saw potential crosscurrents while laying out different interpretations of Ukraine’s strike on the Iranian ship.
One is that Ukraine wants to demonstrate its value as a partner to the U.S., he explained on X last week. Another view is that Israel and the U.S. asked Ukraine to pressure Iran on their behalf amid concerns that any attacks they make on Iranian infrastructure would trigger retaliation against regional economic assets.
A third interpretation is that Ukraine’s attack was in response to Houthi rebels threatening ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
And according to the Financial Times, Ukraine’s strike prompted speculation in Tehran that it was meant as a warning to demonstrate Iran’s Caspian coast is at risk and could be leveraged in talks with the U.S.
Ukraine is already a player in the Middle East, signing a security agreement with Saudi Arabia in March to provide the kingdom with expertise Kyiv has developed in defending against Iranian-designed drones supplied to Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky also made visits to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to reach similar agreements
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served in the first Trump administration, argued that the Iran war ought to be internationalized to include America’s allies in Asia and Europe as well as countries the border Iran, like Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“We have to globalize this conflict because it’s affecting international commerce,” he told Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “We’re taking this on too much of ourselves, or to a lesser extent with Israel. So i think it’s time to globalize it and then think about again our broader set of sanctions, blockading the entire country, squeezing them economically.”
For its part, Russia is also looking to expand the map. In recent weeks, it has launching drones at Romania while a Russian missile landed in Poland, violating NATO airspace.
Russian drones have also crossed into Poland previously, but the latest incident was the first known case involving a Russian missile.
The Center for European Policy Analysis said on Friday that the incursions signal that Russia’s “shadow war” against NATO, which has been backing Ukraine, is moving southward.
That’s after NATO allies in northern and central Europe saw so-called hybrid war attacks last year, such as the cutting of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and drone-induced airport closures.
Energy expert Daniel Yergin, S&P Global vice chairman, told CNBC on Friday that the Iran war is expanding geographically and geopolitically.
“Think about all the seas—the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea—these have all become arenas for oil war,” he said.