How far could the war with Iran spread beyond the Middle East?

What began as a US-Israeli assault on Iran is rapidly evolving into a conflict with the potential to spread far beyond the Middle East. Iranian missiles and drones have already struck or reached Turkey and Azerbaijan, while European powers are rushing additional warships, fighter jets and air defences to the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf to contain the fallout. Analysts warn the longer the war continues, the greater the risk that long-simmering regional fault lines – from Kurdish militancy to Azeri and Baloch separatism – could open entirely new fronts. US President Donald Trump fuelled those fears on Thursday when he voiced support for a possible invasion of Iran by Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq. At the same time, neighbouring Azerbaijan vowed retaliation after being struck by Iranian drones, while Turkey warned it would not tolerate another missile after one entered its airspace the day before. Nato and the European Union are also being pulled closer to the conflict. Britain, France and Italy announced the deployment of additional warships, combat aircraft and air defence systems to the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf states following the missile incident involving Turkey and a drone strike earlier in the week, which damaged a British military base in Cyprus. After initially refusing US requests to use British bases for the strikes, London later granted limited access for defensive operations. Britain has also deployed fighter jets to the region, including to Qatar, to help protect allied bases. France, meanwhile, has authorised the temporary presence of US aircraft on some of its bases and deployed Rafale jets to help defend French facilities in the United Arab Emirates. Nato has also been drawn closer to the conflict after its air defences intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile headed into Turkish airspace, while the EU and Britain have stepped up counterterrorism measures amid fears Tehran could activate clandestine networks abroad. Qatari authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested two cells whose members confessed to links with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and said they had been assigned espionage and sabotage missions. Emerging flashpoints According to Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Iran has clearly embarked on a strategy of “horizontal escalation”. “They are seeking to make the conflict bigger, embroiling more and more countries and exacting a higher price for the war on the international community,” she said. Yacoubian said the conflict could also spread to the Red Sea should Yemen’s Tehran-aligned Houthi movement decide to intervene. “The other question is whether Iran chooses to activate terrorist cells in Europe or the United States, which would represent a further escalation,” she said. If the fighting continues to intensify, Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of the Washington risk consultancy Gulf State Analytics, said there was “good reason to worry” the conflict could expand even further beyond the Middle East. In regions including Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and Latin America, as well as western and eastern Europe, he said he could “easily imagine” Iran targeting American and Israeli interests. They could “include, but not be limited to” embassies and consulates,” Cafiero said. “Iran is clearly focused on making the US and Israel pay a very steep price for waging this war.” Tehran was seeking to draw “as many countries as possible” into the crisis so that they begin to pressure Washington to “halt its aggression” against Iran, he added. Turkey, meanwhile, is in an especially difficult position. In addition to warning Iran not to attack it again, Ankara has defence treaty commitments with Azerbaijan. At the same time, Turkish leaders fear that an uprising among Iran’s Kurdish population could reignite Kurdish separatist activity in southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria, potentially derailing fragile efforts to end decades of insurgency and reintegrate Kurdish political actors into the mainstream. Trump spoke on Monday with the leader of a coalition of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups that have been assembling forces in northern Iraq. The call elevated “the status and importance of the Kurds in Iran in an unprecedented manner”, according to Mohammed Solih, senior non-resident fellow for Kurdish affairs and Iraq at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Trump’s call was the clearest indication yet that the US could be “considering an approach similar to the model used in the toppling” of the Afghan Taliban in 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime in 2003, Solih said in a social media post on Tuesday. Trump appeared to confirm that thinking on Thursday, saying “it would be wonderful” if the Kurdish coalition launched an invasion of Iran, in an interview with Reuters. Ahead of those remarks, Iran launched a pre-emptive cross-border air offensive against facilities used by the Kurdish groups on Thursday. Another potential flashpoint lies to the north. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev suggested the possibility of unrest among Iran’s ethnic Azeri population – estimated to make up roughly 20 per cent of the country – in a televised speech following a drone strike attributed to the IRGC. Those responsible “will be sorry for this”, Aliyev said. “The independent Azerbaijani state is also a place of hope for many Azerbaijanis living in Iran,” he added. The day before, the South Azerbaijan Coordination Platform – the main separatist Azeri group in Iran – publicly urged Aliyev to pursue diplomacy to prevent a Kurdish invasion of Iran. Such a move, it warned, would likely turn Azeri-majority areas near the Iraqi border into a battlefield. According to Istanbul-based analyst Yusuf Erim, editor-at-large of Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT World, the developments increase pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan despite Ankara’s attempts to keep the country out of the war. In quick succession, Ankara’s “three red lines” had either been crossed or appeared close to being crossed, Erim wrote on social media. They include Turkey itself coming under attack, Kurdistan Workers’ Party affiliates receiving arms and attempting to seize territory in Iran and a massacre of Iran’s ethnic Turkic Azeri population. He said he had “a bad feeling” that if the war did not end quickly, “it’s going to be difficult for Turkey to sit this one out”. Expanding theatre Concern is also growing in South Asia after a US submarine sank an Iranian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka on Wednesday. The frigate had departed from a south Indian port. Pakistan’s air force is flying round-the-clock patrols along the country’s southeastern border with Iran, keeping watch for any Israeli warplanes with hostile intentions. A senior security official told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday that any incursion would trigger a military response. None was expected, but Pakistan is taking no risks because – like close ally Turkey – it is watching US-Israeli moves to foment uprisings among minority groups, including the Kurds and the Baloch who live on both sides of the Iran–Pakistan border. Baloch militants have intensified a two-decade insurgency in Pakistan in recent years and could attempt to exploit a collapse of Iranian state authority. Any such development could force Islamabad to intervene militarily to prevent instability spilling across the frontier. With so many countries facing potential destabilisation, the worst-case scenario is what Yacoubian described as “exponential escalation”, in which new conflicts are sparked as the war’s initial escalation reverberates outward. The chances of that happening would increase if, as the UK’s minister for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, told parliament on Thursday, the Iran war was prolonged. “The situation is evolving, but there are indications that this is a crisis, not of days but of weeks and possibly months,” he said.

How far could the war with Iran spread beyond the Middle East?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}From Turkey and the Caucasus to South Asia, analysts warn the war could ignite new flashpoints along regional fault lines

From Turkey and the Caucasus to South Asia, analysts warn the war could ignite new flashpoints along regional fault lines