Not One War but Three Wars in the Middle East
- EU and strategic partners,
- EU strategy and foreign policy,
- Europe in the World,
- European defence / NATO,
- Middle-East / North Africa,
From a strategic perspective, the currently labelled “Iran War” is in fact three distinct wars, inter-connected no doubt, but with distinct aims and characteristics. These are: the US war on Iran with a global dimension, within which there is the narrower, regional Israeli war on Iran with the attendant but separate land invasion of Lebanon, and the third war-in-the-making is the rising armed confrontation between the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran. This framework helps to understand the rationale of Iran’s rapid escalation, as well as the impact on global energy and shipping, and how the US and Israel’s objectives will diverge in a manner that will largely determine the outcome.
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