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Barraged by Iranian attacks and questioning the value of security ties with the United States, nations in the Gulf have turned to Ukraine, Australia and Italy for help.

It took only a few days of Iranian attacks before the Persian Gulf states, which have long relied on American security guarantees, decided they needed more help.

Despite the presence of major U.S. bases, or because of them, Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at the Gulf. And the costly American-made interceptors these nations relied on were in short supply globally.

So Saudi Arabia reached out to Ukraine, a nation with experience fending off Russian drones modeled on Iranian ones. The United Arab Emirates got help from France and Australia. And several Gulf governments asked Italy to provide anti-drone and antiaircraft systems.

The Gulf’s authoritarian leaders, close American allies, have long questioned the value of their American security guarantees. Now, they are in the cross hairs of a regional war that their ally, the United States, started. And complaints about the limited value of American protection are growing louder.

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The defense secretary has disparaged restrictive rules for opening fire that are aimed at reducing the risk of mistakes and civilian casualties.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made contempt for what he calls “stupid rules of engagement” — limits meant to reduce risks to civilians — central to his political identity, and has boasted that he unleashed the military to use “maximum authorities on the battlefield” in the Iran war.

“Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly,” Mr. Hegseth said at a briefing four days after the war started. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.”

This and similar statements are now the backdrop to a body of evidence that the destruction of an Iranian elementary school during the opening hours of the war was likely caused by an American missile strike. The preliminary finding of an ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States was responsible, The New York Times has reported.

The destruction of the school, which coincided with an attack on an adjacent Iranian naval base, killed about 175 civilians, most of them children, according to Iranian officials.

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Countries already walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine and chaotic U.S. policymaking are facing potentially lasting economic damage.

Bombs are exploding in Iran and the Middle East, but the fallout is rattling households and businesses in neighborhoods all over the globe.

In Kansas, home buyers saw 30-year mortgage rates edge above 6 percent this week. In Western India, families mourning the death of a loved one discovered that gas-fired crematories had been temporarily closed.

In Hanoi, Vietnam, gas station owners posted “sold out” signs. In Kenya, tea growers and traders worried their exports to Iran would rot on the dock. And across the United States, Canada, Europe, Britain and Mexico, farmers blanched at the surge in fertilizer costs.

The widening war in Iran has delivered a stunning punch to a worldwide economy that has already been walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine and President Trump’s chaotic policymaking.

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Iran appears to be targeting what it views as American vulnerabilities, including air defenses meant to guard troops and assets in the region.

The Iranian military is adjusting its tactics as the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign progresses, senior U.S. defense officials said, even as the Trump administration insists that the United States is winning the war.

In the 11 days since the conflict began, Iran has targeted key American air defense and radar systems in the region, according to U.S. military officials and military experts.

Iranian-backed militias have attacked hotels frequented by American troops. One militia in Iraq launched a drone swarm attack on an upscale hotel in Erbil, demonstrating that Iran was aware that the Pentagon was housing troops in hotels in the region, a senior U.S. military official said.

He and two other officials said that Iran appeared to have accepted that it could not match the United States and Israel on pure firepower. But by simply surviving the barrage, the officials said, the government in Tehran can claim victory.

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The many similarities between the White House’s justification for war in Iran and Russia’s messaging on Ukraine underscore the risks of a vaguely defined, open-ended war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last Monday that the United States “didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.”

After he invaded Ukraine in 2022, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia put it this way: “We didn’t start the so-called war in Ukraine. Rather, we are trying to finish it.”

Mr. Putin’s war was a disastrous ground invasion of a fledgling democracy. Mr. Trump’s war on Iran is a sophisticated bombing campaign against an aggressive theocracy that was killing its own people in the streets. But some similarities are uncanny, starting with the White House and the Kremlin both trying to avoid calling their actions acts of war.

. . .

Shifting objectives, an exaggerated threat, an ambiguous mission: The many Russian echoes in the White House’s messaging on Iran underscore the risks of a vaguely defined, open-ended war in which the attacking party pins its hopes on regime change.

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President Vladimir V. Putin threatened to cut off remaining gas supplies to Europe as the Iran war drives a surge in energy costs.

Russia has a question for the European countries that have shunned its energy exports: Do you miss us now?

The Kremlin is enjoying a sudden resurgence of its importance as a global supplier of oil and gas, as the conflict in Iran disrupts energy production and shipment across the Middle East and sends global energy prices soaring.

. . .

Mr. Putin spoke with bravado about European nations’ longstanding plans to phase out imports of Russian gas in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, threatening to accelerate the divorce himself as prices spike on the continent.

“Now other markets are opening up, and perhaps it’s more advantageous for us to stop supplying the European market right now,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday to a state television reporter, Pavel Zarubin, who chronicles the Russian leader.

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The country is waiting to see if the government seizes on this moment to disarm the Iranian-backed armed group and how the militants will respond.

For much of the past year, Lebanon’s government has walked a tightrope in its dealings with the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah as it has moved to disarm the militants and curb their influence in Lebanese politics.

Now, as Lebanon faces a rapidly escalating conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the country is waiting to see if the government seizes on this moment to take decisive action against Hezbollah — and how the group will respond.

. . .

“This is the tipping point,” said Sami Nader, the director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. “Either we have the dark scenario where the army clashes with Hezbollah and there is civil strife, or Hezbollah abides by the government decision and they disarm.”

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The Feb. 28 school strike in Minab, which killed dozens, including children, appears to have been part of an attack on an adjacent naval base in southern Iran, where officials said U.S. forces were operating.

The Feb. 28 strike that hit an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab is the deadliest known episode of civilian casualties since the United States and Israel attacked Iran — and no side has yet taken responsibility.

But a body of evidence assembled by The New York Times — including newly released satellite imagery, social media posts and verified videos — indicates the school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

And official statements that U.S. forces were attacking naval targets near the Strait of Hormuz, where the I.R.G.C. base is located, suggest they were most likely to have carried out the strike.

. . .

Determining precisely what happened has been impeded by the lack of visible weapons fragments and the inability of outside reporters to reach the scene. The total death toll has yet to be independently confirmed, but Iranian health officials and state media said the strike had killed at least 175 people, many of them children, at the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school.

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The C.I.A. has given small weapons to Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq in a covert program that began before the current war.

Pro-American, Iranian Kurdish forces based in Iraq are preparing armed units that could enter Iran, creating a potential new front in an already expanding conflict, according to Iraqi officials and senior members of Iranian Kurdish groups.

The C.I.A. has previously given small arms to the Iranian Kurdish forces as part of a covert program to destabilize Iran, an effort that began before the current war, according to people familiar with the effort.

But in a briefing on Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said reports that President Trump had agreed to any plan for the Kurds to launch an insurgency in Iran were “completely false.”

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“We’ll see what happens with the people,” President Trump said as he appeared to be distancing himself from the longer-term consequences of the war in Iran.

American leaders say they are “punishing” Iran, “annihilating” its navy and meting out “retribution” against its rulers.

What comes after all that destruction, they increasingly insist, is not the United States’ problem.

“We’ll see what happens with the people,” President Trump said on Tuesday as he hosted Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, referring to the possibility of a popular uprising in Iran in the wake of the war. “You know, they have their chance.”

It was the latest instance of Mr. Trump and his top officials taking pains to paint Iran’s political future as being outside the scope of American responsibility.

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The risks for President Trump from the assault on Iran are escalating as casualties mount, oil prices rise and the war expands across the region.

Six American service members were killed, and U.S. military jets were shot out of the sky. Investors are bracing for market turmoil, fearing prolonged disruption to oil supplies. President Trump says the military campaign against Iran could extend for weeks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that “the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military.”

With his decision Friday to authorize war against Iran, Mr. Trump is taking the biggest gamble of his presidency, risking the lives of American troops, more deaths and instability in the world’s most volatile region, and his own political standing.

Mr. Trump, facing declining approval ratings and staring down the possibility that Republicans will lose control of Congress in the midterms, plunged the United States into what is shaping up to be its most expansive military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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Tehran shows no signs of buckling, even as the death of the supreme ruler creates a major power vacuum in the country.

Iran is vowing vengeance against the U.S. and Israel and signaling to the world that its government is not about to collapse, despite airstrikes Saturday that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a cadre of other senior Iranian leaders.

Into Sunday, Iranian forces launched missiles and drones at targets throughout the Middle East, including against U.S. bases in the region and Israel. Some of those targets were apprehended by British fighter jets, U.K. Defense Minister John Healey said Sunday. Kuwait’s military also said it intercepted many of the Iranian missiles fired at its airspace on Sunday.

Many, however, have hit their targets and casualties mount. Kuwait’s health ministry announced Sunday that Iran’s latest volley of strikes killed one person and wounded 20 others. A strike against targets in central Israel killed six people on Sunday. The death toll in the United Arab Emirates from Iranian attacks rose to three on Sunday.

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