The US war against Iran is spinning out of control. Over the past week, the conflict has expanded across the Middle East, with attacks and counterattacks in at least five countries. Instead of a quick campaign to topple Iran's regime, Donald Trump has started a regional conflict that risks severely disrupting energy supplies and prices – and could trigger a global recession.
After a few days of relative calm, the Pentagon has resumed almost nightly strikes against Iran, and Tehran has retaliated against US military bases. The violence has also spread to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt. Peace negotiations between Washington and Tehran, brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, show little sign of progress.
Saudi strikes inside Iraq
The most serious escalation came on Wednesday, when Saudi Arabia said it had joined the US in carrying out airstrikes inside Iraq against the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), killing at least 20 fighters. Saudi officials had blamed Iraqi-based militias for drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities on 27 July and warned that the kingdom would retaliate if the Iraqi government did not restrain the groups. The PMF is a network of mostly Shia militias created in 2014 with Tehran's support to fight Islamic State.
Trump said the US and Saudi militaries coordinated with the Iraqi government before carrying out the strikes, but Iraqi leaders quickly denied having any prior knowledge. That denial underscored how many regional leaders do not want to be associated with Trump's expanding war. The attacks also threatened to undermine a fragile power balance inside Iraq, which has struggled to prevent the US-Iran war from spilling over its borders while maintaining good relations with both sides.
Iraq's militias and a killing that set the stage
After invading Iraq in 2003, Washington ousted Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated regime. It then helped install a Shia-led government for the first time in Iraq's modern history, opening the door for Iran to extend its influence and cultivate powerful Shia militias. Iran's efforts were overseen by Qassem Suleimani, the general who headed the foreign operations wing of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Suleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020 on Trump's orders – an attack that helped set the stage for the current war and fueled further animosity between the US and Iraq's PMF coalition, whose deputy chief, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed alongside him.
Beyond dragging Iraq's militias deeper into the regional conflict, the US and Saudi Arabia risk expanding the war in even more dangerous directions. The kingdom is reportedly planning a major military offensive against the Houthi militia, another Iranian ally that controls large areas of Yemen.
Red Sea shipping and the Houthi blockade
After Trump launched his war in late February, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquid gas supplies passed each day. As a result, some producers – especially Saudi Arabia – shifted their exports to the Red Sea. The Houthis have since demonstrated their ability to disrupt international shipping through the Red Sea, as they did after Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2023, when the militia began firing missiles and drones at ships near the Bab el-Mandab strait. That disrupted traffic, drove up insurance premiums and forced companies to reroute vessels around Africa, adding weeks to journeys and increasing the cost of goods in Europe.
So far, the Houthis have not tried to disrupt ships passing through the Red Sea on a large scale via the Bab el-Mandab chokepoint, which comes closest to Yemeni territory. But on 20 July, the militia declared a blockade on Saudi vessels transiting the Red Sea, claiming it was retaliation for an air and naval blockade the kingdom had imposed years earlier on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The Houthis have since attacked several ships, forcing Saudi Arabia to reroute nearly half of its oil exports through a longer and more expensive journey around the southern tip of Africa. On 25 July, the Houthis claimed to have struck "sensitive" oil infrastructure sites inside Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones, disrupting the kingdom's Red Sea export hub of Yanbu. The Saudis have retaliated with air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Economic damage and a new maritime coalition
Like Iran's other neighbors in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia has been hit hard by the war, especially by Tehran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its attacks on energy infrastructure. Saudi Arabia's GDP decreased by nearly 5% in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the same period last year.
Saudi leaders are blaming Iran for the latest Houthi escalation and have vowed to set up an international maritime coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea. On Thursday, the Saudi defense ministry announced that 14 states – including Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan – had agreed so far to join. But it is unclear how this new Saudi-led effort would differ from the existing EU-led naval protection mission, Operation Aspides, which is focused on the Red Sea.
Yemen's painful legacy and the collapsing ceasefire
Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, has tried to steer clear of a direct confrontation with Iran. But his latest conflict with the Houthis risks reopening a painful chapter. In 2015, Saudi Arabia, with US weapons and political support, led a coalition of Sunni Arab states into Yemen's long-running civil war to dislodge the Houthis from Sana'a and restore the internationally recognized government. By the end of 2021, the United Nations estimated the conflict had killed 377,000 people in Yemen, nearly 60% of whom did not die from direct warfare but rather from food shortages, cholera outbreaks and the destruction of Yemen's healthcare system.
Despite thousands of airstrikes over seven years, the Houthis remained in control of the capital. The two sides agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire in 2022, but negotiations over a permanent peace deal – which would recognize Houthi control over parts of Yemen and provide some form of Saudi reparations – stalled after the militia started attacking ships in the Red Sea in 2023. Today, Saudi Arabia's tenuous ceasefire with the Houthis is in danger of collapsing, yet another casualty of Trump's disastrous war against Iran.
Mohamad Bazzi is a Guardian US columnist, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University.
