US-Iran conflict spreads as new fronts open

TOI correspondent from Washington: The US-Iran war has entered its most dangerous phase to date. The conflict is now spilling across multiple middle eastern countries and sucking in new combatants – including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq – in an escalation that military strategists say is beginning to resemble the chain-reaction dynamics that preceded the outbreak of World War I.What began as direct U.S+Israel-Iran hostility has now expanded into a complex regional war stretching from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and even as far as the Caspian Sea, with Russia and China on the fringes of the conflict. In the latest escalation, US and Saudi Arabian forces jointly struck Iran-backed militias in Iraq after Tehran's allied groups intensified attacks on American and Gulf targets.