The wars in Iran and Ukraine are increasingly overlapping and expanding in scope, as the United States weighs whether to launch another major military operation against Tehran.

Last weekend, Ukraine announced it had attacked an Iranian cargo vessel transporting military supplies between Iran and Russia across the Caspian Sea. The landlocked Caspian has served as a discreet supply corridor between the two countries, largely beyond the reach of Western naval power. Iran has maintained that it is not involved in Russia's war in Ukraine, although Kyiv has stated that Tehran continues to supply drones to Moscow.

Within days, drones struck liquid natural gas tankers at a port on Egypt's Mediterranean coast — the first time the country had been targeted since the Iran war began in February. The attack threatens the Suez Canal's role as a secure corridor for moving oil out of the Red Sea. The canal, which handles roughly 10 percent of global seaborne trade, had already seen traffic disruptions from earlier Red Sea shipping attacks, forcing some carriers to reroute around Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Separately, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a military coalition to safeguard shipping in the Red Sea, responding to ongoing attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow chokepoint links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries a substantial share of Europe-bound energy and cargo traffic. The kingdom has relied on that route to export oil and circumvent the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's daily oil consumption normally passes. Riyadh stated that 14 countries had offered support for the coalition, including Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, and several other Arab and African nations.

Dan Alamariu, chief geopolitical strategist at Alpine Macro, observed in a note on Friday that Iran and its allies have struck or threatened nearly every country in the region since the conflict began.

"Egypt was the largest one still untouched, and it had worked to stay that way, keeping open relations with both Washington and Tehran," he said. "Neutrality did not exempt it."

Alamariu noted that the Mediterranean attack, which Egypt attributed to Iran, could affect European gas prices, shipping rates, and insurance costs. His comments came as Iran demanded that European nations hold Ukraine accountable for its strike on the vessel in the Caspian Sea.

"The Iran and Ukraine wars may be connecting," he warned. "A Ukrainian strike in the Caspian Sea was followed within days by burning gas ships on the Mediterranean. It may not be coincidental — there is a tail risk of some convergence between the two conflicts."

Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert at the think tank SWP Berlin, also identified potential crosscurrents, outlining several interpretations of Ukraine's strike on the Iranian ship.

Posting on X last week, he suggested one reading: Ukraine aims to demonstrate its strategic value as a partner to the United States. A second possibility is that Israel and the U.S. asked Ukraine to apply pressure on Iran on their behalf, given concerns that direct attacks on Iranian infrastructure by those countries could trigger retaliation against regional economic assets. A third interpretation is that the strike responded to Houthi threats against shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

According to the Financial Times, Ukraine's strike also fueled speculation in Tehran that it was intended as a warning — showing that Iran's Caspian coast is vulnerable and could serve as leverage in negotiations with Washington.

Ukraine has already established itself as an actor in the Middle East. In March, it signed a security agreement with Saudi Arabia to share expertise Kyiv has developed countering Iranian-designed drones supplied to Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky also traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to pursue similar agreements.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served during the first Trump administration, argued that the Iran war should be internationalized to include American allies in Asia and Europe, as well as countries bordering Iran such as Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

"We have to globalize this conflict because it's affecting international commerce," Esper said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. "We're taking this on too much of ourselves, or to a lesser extent with Israel. So I think it's time to globalize it and then think about again our broader set of sanctions, blockading the entire country, squeezing them economically."

Russia, for its part, has also been widening the conflict's geography. In recent weeks, it has launched drones at Romania, and a Russian missile landed in Poland, violating NATO airspace. Russian drones had previously crossed into Polish territory, but the latest incident marked the first known case involving a Russian missile. Such incidents test NATO's collective defense framework, under which an armed attack on one ally can be considered an attack on all — though the alliance has historically distinguished between deliberate strikes and accidental spillover.

The Center for European Policy Analysis stated on Friday that these incursions signal Russia's "shadow war" against NATO — which has been backing Ukraine — is shifting southward. That assessment follows a series of so-called hybrid warfare attacks against NATO allies in northern and central Europe last year, including the severing of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea and drone-induced airport closures.

Energy expert Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global, told CNBC on Friday that the Iran war is expanding both geographically and geopolitically.

"Think about all the seas — the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea — these have all become arenas for oil war," he said.