A resurgence of fighting in the war with Iran is expanding the scope of the conflict across the Middle East and further threatening shipments of oil and other products crucial to the global economy.
With little sign of peace talks resuming, a series of attacks, including two consecutive nights of strikes between Iran and the United States, ended a short period of relative calm — and entangled a growing list of U.S. allies in the conflict. Among them are Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which said it was now forming a military coalition.
As the scope of the fighting widened, U.S. Central Command said Thursday morning that it had completed another wave of strikes on sites in Iran overnight, including military command centers and missile and drone facilities. And the Jordanian military later said it had shot down five missiles launched from Iran.
Egypt, too, has now been directly touched by the war for the first time since the United States and Israel launched it in February.
On Thursday, the Egyptian authorities said that an unidentified drone had set off an explosion at the Mediterranean port of Damietta the previous day. Two ships there, including a U.S.-owned gas storage tanker, caught fire at the port, exposing a new vulnerability for Middle East shipping tied to the conflict.
At a news conference at the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump implied that Iran was responsible for the attack, without offering details. Hours later, U.S. Central Command, which directs American forces in the region, said it had completed what it called a “heavy wave of strikes” on sites in Iran.
Those strikes came a day after Saudi Arabia said its warplanes had joined American forces to attack Iranian-linked militias in Iraq. It was the first time that Saudi authorities have publicly acknowledged direct involvement in the war.
Diplomats said Thursday that the military coalition the Saudi government is seeking to form would protect shipping in the Red Sea in a response to recent attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen, who are allied with Iran, on Saudi tankers there.
Iranian strikes have already brought traffic in another important waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, to a near standstill. And the strike on the Egyptian port raised concerns that another vital transit point, the Suez Canal, might also be at risk.
The Saudi kingdom said Thursday that so far, 14 countries had agreed to join its maritime coalition.
Underscoring the war’s damage, Saudi Arabia’s economy shrank by almost 5 percent in the second quarter, compared with the same period last year, according to preliminary data released by the kingdom on Thursday.
It is unclear how the new coalition would differ from a current European Union operation to protect Red Sea shipping, known as Operation Aspides. Saudi Arabia has invited European countries to join the new group, as well as the United States, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and dozens of other nations, one of the diplomats said.
The urgency of the Saudi initiative appears to signal the dissatisfaction of the kingdom’s leaders with existing protective measures against the Houthis. On July 20, the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi vessels transiting the Red Sea. The militant group has since claimed attacks on several ships and has not backed down even after Saudi Arabia bombed Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen.
Earlier in the conflict, after Iran all but shut down shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia sought to bypass it by pumping oil across the desert to a port on the Red Sea. But the attacks over the past two weeks have forced tankers carrying Saudi oil to Asia to adopt a different approach.
Now, nearly half of the Saudi crude exported through the Red Sea is taking the longer and more expensive route through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean Sea and around the southern tip of Africa, according to Windward, a maritime data agency.
The drone attack at Damietta has exposed vulnerabilities to that shipping route as well.
Although the strike did not appear to directly disrupt traffic to the Suez Canal, two Iranians, who asked not to be named to discuss security matters, said on Wednesday that it was meant to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be disrupted further if Iran chose to escalate. The Iranians did not say whether Iran or one of its allies had carried out the strike.
About 10 percent of seaborne trade moves through the Suez, with about 50 ships passing through the 120-mile canal each day, according to the Suez Canal Authority, an Egyptian government agency.
In addition to the threats to shipping, the war is destabilizing the fragile domestic power balances inside countries like Iraq.
For months, the government in Baghdad has sought to curb Iranian-backed militias that have long operated in Iraqi territory, struggling to meet the Trump administration’s demands that it bring them under control. But the wave of U.S.-Saudi airstrikes that targeted the militias early Wednesday may upend those efforts.
Iraqi political leaders on Wednesday questioned the wisdom of the sweeping attack, which killed at least 20 people and was carried out, they said, without coordination with the Baghdad government.
The attacks may offer a new justification for Iran’s allies in Iraq to hold on to their arms and to claim that they are the forces best positioned to protect the country’s sovereignty. And for Iran, the strikes offered a chance to encourage its allies in Iraq to join the broader war.
“The era of shedding Iraqi blood with impunity is over,” said Mohammad Tamimi, the leader of one Iranian-aligned militia, al-Waad al-Sadeq.
Reporting was contributed by Erika Solomon, Falih Hassan, Lynsey Chutel, Farnaz Fassihi, Leo Sands, Jenny Gross, Ismaeel Naar, Qasim Nauman, Zane Irwin, Peter Eavis and Pranav Baskar.
