From the very first US and Israeli strikes on Iran, it was apparent that any conflict lasting longer than a few days was also likely to cause some very significant collateral damage, not least to the cause of Ukraine. And so it has proved.
With the attention of the United States, the Middle East and Europe focused on this new war – both on the human costs and on the spiralling economic costs resulting from Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – the continued fighting in Ukraine has been, to a large extent, absent from the news. As Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, pointed out in a sadly clear-eyed interview this weekend, “We have to recognise that we are not the priority for today.”
