Pakistan and Afghanistan Continue Exchanging Strikes as the Other Middle East War Rages On

Pakistan and Afghanistan are engaged in an escalating series of cross-border strikes that threatens to open yet another front of military conflict in the broader Middle East region, even as the world's attention is consumed by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The exchange of fire between two nuclear-armed neighbors — one of which is governed by the Taliban — represents a dangerous parallel conflict that has received almost no international attention. The Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes underscore how the Iran war is creating a permissive environment for regional conflicts to escalate without the diplomatic restraint that great-power attention typically provides.