Eastern Europe & Middle East crises: Threat of "deadliest" war facing World

By Elnur Enveroglu

Today the world is facing a fatal danger. On the one hand, the ongoing serious tensions in Eastern Europe and on the other in the Middle East have already begun to make a deadly war inevitable.

If we consider that there are actors who possess the world's most dangerous nuclear weapons on both fronts, this endangers the future of both parties and even the surrounding countries.

Unfortunately, in the background of rising tensions, confidence in reconciliation between the parties in both regions is waning.

Russia-Ukraine war: What is happening on the front?

The Ukrainian army, slowly but steadily advancing towards the Russian territories, captured Kursk, Bryansk, and Belgorod regions starting on August 6. However, it is interesting that the fact that the Ukrainian army was able to advance more than 30 km deep into the Russian territory within nine days did not alarm official Moscow that much.

Early this week, State Duma Defense Committee member Viktor Zavarzin said on the air of the radio station "Moscow Speaks" that there would be no mobilization in Russia, since "we have enough forces, there are already successes there, and our aviation is working."

On August 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Ukraine's incursion into Russian territory a "large-scale provocation" and stressed that the other party will be forced to retreat with an adequate countermeasure.

However, the Ukrainian operation is slowly expanding into neighbouring Belgorod. The Ukrainian army has taken some border villages in Belgorod and as a result of this, 11,000 people have been evacuated from the Belgorod region. According to the Ukrainian sources, thousands of Ukrainian troops are in Kursk.

Nuclear thread around Zaporizhzhia

The intensification of the war between Russia and Ukraine, on the other hand, has strengthened the new nuclear threat on the territory of Ukraine. The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which is controlled by Russia, has been a threat to neighbouring countries for a long time. The fire at the nuclear plant early this week caused partial damage to the cooling tower but did not cause a serious fire. But the International Atomic Energy Agency is sounding the alarm about this, in which Rafael Grossi, chief of IAEA, urges in his statement that “These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now”.

Although both sides, that is, Russia and Ukraine, blame each other for the incident, there is no precise information about the party that opened fire. In reality, it remains an indisputable fact that any malfunction that may occur in a nuclear power plant can spread a deadly threat to the environment.

Expecting a positive outcome in a war that has lasted more than two years and resulted in the deaths of more than 10,500 civilians is far from plausible. Although Ukraine has suffered a greater loss of territory than Russia (about 18%), the country's leadership insists that the army will not withdraw from the territories captured in Russia's Kursk and Belgorod provinces in the past week. Ukraine considers negotiations impossible in the current situation and considers this outcome decisive in its long-lost struggle against Russia.

Rising Middle East tension in parallel

The fact is that the ongoing tension between Ukraine and Russia continues in parallel with somewhat similar motives in the Middle East. For example, negotiations and peace agreements are completely excluded from the process.

The conflict, which intensified after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau chief, in Tehran, does not let the negotiations close at the moment.

The quartet of Israel, the United States, Hamas, and Iran are currently standing at a critical point in a bitter war. The White House officials, who believe that an Iranian attack is possible at any moment, call on Israel to be on the alert.

Israel's next rocket attacks, which resulted in the death of 24 people in Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, caused Iran's counter-reaction. White House Security and Communications Advisor John F. Kirby told reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies shared the Israeli view that the anticipated attack was something that "could happen as soon as this week."

The government leadership of Israel, affected by the tension, is already trying to resort to stricter measures. For example, even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "total victory" plan was not taken seriously by the country's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, it shows that Israel has been enough with the ongoing conflict with Hamas that has been continuing for almost 11 months. At any cost, Israel is currently trying to prevent Hamas and military groups close to Iran. There is no talk of using nuclear weapons to the extreme. But given that both Iran and, presumably, Israel possess nuclear warheads, then it can be argued that the world is at great risk of catastrophe.

Can the Middle East and Ukraine-Russia crises lead to the unification of the Russian-Iranian sides against the West?

Many possibilities are beginning to be confirmed. Thus, it was said that there is a possibility that common interests of Russia and Iran may arise during the ongoing tension between Russia and Ukraine, as well as in the Middle East. From a distance, the relevance of the issue, first of all, raises a question, but when analysed in depth, it is already inevitable that this possibility can happen at any moment. The fact that Ukraine is already advancing on Russian territory indicates that Western forces are increasingly targeting Moscow. This was mentioned by Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a statement regarding the Ukraine's incursion. Although the White House denied the fact that it had been behind the Ukrainian army since August 6 and said that it was not aware of the advantage gained by Ukraine, the official Kremlin has already begun to understand what is happening. In such a case, there is no other choice but to divert the West's thoughts and focus its attention on the Middle East. Therefore, the official Moscow does not want to ignore the possibility that the Russian-Iranian union can influence the war, even if it is insignificant.