How the Iran war spread beyond one single strait

The Iran war is dragging on — and dragging more nations in Sat 8 Aug 2026 at 4:41am As Donald Trump has swung between vowing to strike Iran "very hard" and hinting at peace "pretty soon", the war in Iran has spread in new and dangerous ways. The diplomatic process surrounding the Iran war remains opaque, with on-again off-again talks and sometimes contradictory claims about whether diplomatic conversations are even happening at all. But on the ground, the war has widened in recent weeks, with analysts saying Iran's strategy is putting more pressure on the US and its allies. "It's not just around the US and Strait of Hormuz, it's now broadening elsewhere," says Middle East analyst Ian Parmeter from the Australian National University. After a brief pause in hostilities due to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on June 18, the conflict has continued to drag on — and dragged more countries in. "Iran has a strategy of geographically broadening the conflict, it's what you would call horizontal escalation," Mr Parmeter says. "It's not just the US against Iran. Iran is putting pressure on many other US allies in the region. "It's metastasised." Despite the US and Iran signing a Memorandum of Understanding in mid-June, the agreement to halt fighting ultimately fell apart. In recent weeks, the war has threatened to expand beyond its main fronts to embroil more countries across — and even beyond — the Middle East region. In early July, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps once more targeted key US military sites in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. This was in response to the US launching a wave of military strikes on Iran, which themselves were a response to attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Days later, the situation in Saudi Arabia intensified. The Iranian-backed Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of bombing Yemen's main international airport in a bid to prevent an Iranian plane landing there. The Houthis and the Saudis have been in conflict for more than a decade. A truce brokered in 2022 has largely held until the strike on Sanaa International Airport, which is in Houthi-controlled territory in the west of Yemen. Initially, the Houthis fired missiles in response, and then escalated further… … declaring a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia, targeting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow waterway between Yemen and the Horn of Africa had become a key export route for Saudi oil after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis have claimed several attacks on ships in the Red Sea since July, including a recent incident where a projectile struck an Indian-flagged ship off the coast of Yemen, causing it to capsize. Experts say increased tensions in the Red Sea could create another choke point for global shipping and drive up the cost of oil, putting more pressure on the US. Around the same time, two American servicemen were killed after an Iranian attack on a US base in Jordan. The US military then carried out new air strikes against Iran to "swiftly punish" it for the attacks. By late July, the Ukraine and Iran wars converged in the Caspian Sea. Kyiv said Ukrainian drones hit a Russian missile boat as well as two cargo ships in the sea that were "under international sanctions and were used to transport military cargo between Iran and Russia". Iranian officials immediately disputed the assertion, saying Ukraine hit a commercial vessel carrying iron and killed one sailor. The Caspian Sea is the largest landlocked body of water in the world and is bordered by Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Iran. Relations between Ukraine and Iran have been deeply strained since 2022, when Iran began supplying thousands of drones to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. After the attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "we must do everything to ensure that under no circumstances do we open a new front". Days later, a drone strike sparked fires on two gas vessels in Egypt's Mediterranean port of Damietta — the first such strike on Egypt during the conflict. It raised a new threat to shipping through the Suez Canal, one of the last major export routes available to Saudi oil amid the expanding war. No-one has claimed responsibility for the drone, and Iran has denied any involvement. By early August, strikes were continuing around the Strait of Hormuz. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said it received reports of two maritime incidents off Oman, including one in which a tanker was struck by an unknown projectile. The two incidents happened near Lima and Khasab respectively, two points on Oman's Musandam Peninsula at the entrance of the strait. Oman's ports were targeted in the early stages of the Iran war. But recent attacks, along with similar incidents across the Middle East region, demonstrate a widening of the conflict — and one which analysts say is by design. Mr Parmeter said in a "conventional war", Iran had no hope of beating the United States. "Its strategy is to create economic disruption, which it is now starting to do," he said. "Iran knows these Middle East states are vulnerable because they are hosting US air bases and it undercuts their economic goals as places people will want to go and invest. "So they go to the US and say, 'for God's sake stop this war'". Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman just this week spoke with Donald Trump, urging him to delay military action and return to negotiations. Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said the conflict was "spreading all over the Middle East". "The bigger the playing field, the more distracted the United States is, the more pressure there is on the US military to respond to different locations." Iranians are using their allies in Yemen to create pressure in key waterways, he said. The blockade announced by the Houthis on Saudi-led shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait leads to the Red Sea. A growing volume of Saudi oil, along with other shipping, has been diverted north up the Red Sea toward the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline, according to Reuters. The Red Sea serves as a shortcut to the Suez Canal and if it is not passable, that will further delay and drive up the cost of global shipping and oil. "Iran is not trying to be a major power in the Bab el-Mandab Strait, but the Houthis make it possible for them … it puts more pressure on the global economy and on the United States, so without a doubt expanding the conflict is one of Iran's main tactics during this period," Mr Ibish said. The suspected targeting of Damietta port by Iran has created another pain point for the US by impacting global shipping routes. "The attack on Damietta was interesting," Mr Parmeter said. "We haven't had a claim of responsibility but what it does indicate is that if the Saudis get smaller oil tankers that can transit the Suez Canal and go through the Mediterranean then it is possible those ships can be targeted. "Iran has got significant allies in the region that it can call on." Recent Iranian attacks on US assets in Jordan were another expansion designed to put pressure on the American and Jordanian governments. "There is public pressure on the Jordanian government to pull back from the alliance with the United States because protesters say it's endangering Jordan's national security," Mr Ibish said. "There are lots of critics of the US in Jordan and it's given them an opportunity to complain a lot and with some grounds." Fighting two different wars Jared Mondschein, director of Research at US Studies Centre, said the US and Iran were ultimately fighting different challenges. "I think that Iran is willing to horizontally escalate tensions, because they are fighting existential challenges, whereas Donald Trump is fighting a political one," he said. He believes Iran is trying to increase the political costs on Donald Trump ahead of the midterm elections "while the United States is trying to increase the on-the-ground costs and military costs to Iran". "There's a lot less choices available to Donald Trump now in terms of steps forward, or at least politically palatable choices." Credits - Reporting: Georgie Hewson and Jessica Riga - Additional reporting: Alison Xiao - Development: Simon Elvery - Editing: Matt Liddy - Share options - Copy link - X (formerly Twitter)