Two weeks into Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran, the conflict is beginning to take on a shape that few strategists publicly predicted but many privately feared.
Wars rarely stay confined to the maps drawn for them at the outset. The war against Iran is proving no exception.
What began as a campaign of American and Israeli airstrikes against Iranian military targets is now rippling far beyond the original battlefield. At least 20 countries are involved in some form – firing missiles, intercepting them, deploying forces or quietly supplying intelligence and weapons.
The economic shockwaves are travelling even further.
This is not yet approaching World War III, economist John Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said this week.
“It becomes World War III if another major power comes in on the side of Iran, and no one’s doing that, not even China, who’s losing access to a lot of oil here,” he says.
But the scale of involvement – the number of countries drawn in, the overlapping crises and the involvement of major powers – makes it the most internationally entangled conflict in decades. And it is still widening.
Iran has struck at least 12 countries since the war began, targeting American and Israeli military installations, Gulf capitals, oil facilities and civilian areas in what appears to be an effort to impose maximum pain on Washington and its allies.
The attacks have stretched from Israel and Lebanon across the Gulf states and into parts of the eastern Mediterranean.
The economic consequences have been just as immediate. Tehran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow corridor through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil cargo passes – sending prices for oil, gas and petrochemicals surging across global markets.
What began as a military confrontation is now a global energy shock, and experts point out that Chinese President Xi Jinping finds himself balancing competing pressures.
China relies on Iran for a substantial portion of its oil imports and has been urging Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to avoid a deeper global energy crisis. Yet US intelligence suggests Beijing may also be preparing to offer Iran financial assistance and components for its missile program.
Melanie Hart, a senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, says China’s interest in the conflict from an energy point of view might be overplayed.
“China is less dependent on imported oil than many observers realise,” she said.
“It’s working to electrify the nation’s auto-fleet and making shocking progress. And Chinese leaders took advantage of the past few years of low oil prices to go on a buying spree, beefing up their domestic reserves to plan for a future supply crisis such as the one they are now facing.”
She says China is perhaps more prepared than any other major economy to face the energy crisis that could emerge from the situation in Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel finds itself fighting on two fronts.
While its air force pounds targets across Iran, its military is also engaged in a ground fight with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. More than half a million people have reportedly been displaced and hundreds killed within a week as Israeli bombardment intensifies.
The geography of the conflict is expanding in other directions as well.
European militaries have been drawn directly into the fight, intercepting Iranian missiles and drones as they cross allied airspace – the first time NATO forces have shot down Iranian weapons over member territory.
France has dispatched its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean. United Kingdom warships are already in the region after an Iranian-made drone struck a British base on Cyprus.
Even long-time rivalries are suddenly intersecting with the war. Greece and Turkey – both NATO members but geopolitical adversaries – have rushed forces to Cyprus, where their aircraft now patrol opposite sides of the island’s long-standing partition line.
Countries far from the Middle East are also being drawn in.
Australia has signalled it will send missiles and a radar surveillance aircraft to help the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states defend against Iranian strikes.
And in one of the war’s most striking developments, a US submarine reportedly sank an Iranian warship near Sri Lanka – the first American torpedo kill at sea since the closing days of World War II.
Behind the visible conflict lies a quieter strategic struggle among the world’s major powers.
Vladimir Putin’s government is reported to be sharing satellite imagery of American naval movements with Tehran, helping Iranian forces track US assets across the region.
At the same time, Ukraine – which has spent years defending against Iranian-made drones supplied to Russia – has reportedly sent specialists and interceptor systems to assist American and Gulf forces facing the same technology.
Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert in modern American history at Leiden University, said the conflict inevitably means that Washington will have to pull munitions away from other theatre, leaving fewer available for Kyiv’s European allies to purchase for the defence of Ukraine and for American deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
“The 12-day war the US and Israel fought with Iran in June 2025 is thought to have consumed around a quarter of the entire US inventory of THAADS,” he said, referring to Terminal High Altitude Area Defence Systems, anti-ballistic missile systems. “When stocks of these munitions diminish during a war, choices have to be made about which targets to protect – and which not to protect.”
Peace talks over the war in Ukraine scheduled for Abu Dhabi have been postponed indefinitely. Washington has eased sanctions to allow India to buy Russian oil to stabilise energy markets.
Diplomatic efforts around Gaza have stalled as Gulf states that pledged billions for reconstruction focus instead on defending themselves from Iranian missile attacks.
And US strategists are confronting a different concern altogether: the pace at which interceptor missiles and other munitions are being consumed.
Those stockpiles were built up over years largely with one scenario in mind – deterring a potential conflict with Taiwan involving China.
Now they are spent in the skies over the Middle East.
None of this means a global war is inevitable.
But the pattern is familiar to historians of conflict: a regional confrontation that gradually entangles allies, rivals, supply chains and energy markets until the war touches far more of the world than anyone originally intended.
Historian Niall Ferguson said this week we were more likely in Gulf War III rather than facing World War III.
“But if it drags on, Gulf War III is potentially an event as significant as the 1973-74 oil shock,” he said.
“As well as being economically disastrous, that was one of the more dangerous moments in Cold War I. Today is best understood as an equally dangerous moment in Cold War II.”
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.
