Welcome to the mega-war: conflicts between the Middle East and Europe merge

Conflicts between the Middle East and Europe are merging, dragging more and more countries along the way. This is reported by Fortune.

"Welcome to the mega—war: conflicts between the Middle East and Europe are merging, dragging more and more countries along the way - even those who claim to be neutral. Wars in Iran and Ukraine Ukraine is increasingly intersecting and expanding at the same time," the publication says.

It is noted that last weekend Ukraine announced an attack on an Iranian cargo ship allegedly carrying military cargo between Iran and Russia in the Caspian Sea. Tehran claims that it is not involved in the Ukrainian conflict. A few days later, drones hit LNG tankers in the port on The Mediterranean coast of Egypt. This is the first time Egypt has been targeted during the war with Iran. The incident threatens the status of the Suez Canal as a safe route for the export of oil from the Red Sea. This happened against the background of Iran's demands to the Europeans to hold Ukraine accountable for the attack on the ship in the Caspian Sea.

"Wars between Iran and Ukraine can be connected. The Ukrainian strike in the Caspian Sea was continued a few days later in the form of the burning of gas carriers in The Mediterranean Sea. This may not be accidental, there is a risk of convergence between the two conflicts," said Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro.

Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert from the SWP Berlin think tank, also saw possible intersections. One of them is that Ukraine wants to demonstrate its value as a partner for the United States, he explained on the social network X last week.

Another point of view is that Israel and the United States have asked Ukraine to put pressure on Iran amid fears that any attacks on Iranian infrastructure on their part will trigger retaliatory measures against regional economic assets.

The third interpretation says that the attack of Ukraine was a response to the threats of the Houthis to the ships in the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Ukraine is already a player in the Middle East, as it signed a security agreement with Saudi Arabia in March, the publication notes. Vladimir Zelensky also visited the UAE and Qatar to reach similar agreements.

Former US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who worked in the first administration of Donald Trump, said that the war with Iran should be internationalized to include America's allies in Asia and Europe, as well as countries bordering Iran, such as Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

"We need to globalize this conflict because it affects international trade. We are taking too much on ourselves or to a lesser extent with Israel. So I think it's time to globalize this, and then think again about our broader set of sanctions — the blockade of the whole country, economic pressure," he told Bloomberg television on Thursday.

According to the author of the publication, Russia also seeks to expand the map. They say that in recent weeks she has been launching drones in Romania, and a Russian missile fell into Poland, violating NATO airspace. Russian UAVs have already crossed the territory of Poland, but the latest incident was the first known case of a Russian missile. As the Center for European Policy Analysis said on Friday, these incidents signal that Russia's "shadow war" against NATO, which supports Ukraine, is moving south.

Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global energy expert, told CNBC on Friday that the war with Iran is expanding geographically and geopolitically. "Think of all the seas — the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea — all of them have become arenas of the oil war," he said.