Us getting bogged down in Iran, however, presents other countries with their own windows of opportunity. And the biggest one is China invading Taiwan. China has been saber-rattling and openly planning an invasion of Taiwan, to be done at some point in the next few years. What better time to launch it than when the US has already been depleting their limited weapon stocks in Ukraine, and just got bogged down in Iran?
IMO, there is a lot of conjuntive in it.
For now, there were only bombs on nuclear facilities from the US side... No foot troops getting bogged down. Nothing getting bogged down for now...
You can always imagine how something could link to a word war. That would have already worked for Ukraine. That would have worked with Afghanistan as well.
The question is how realistic it is. I'm not a fan of painting the devil on the wall by declaring WW3 myself on Lemmy and saying goodbye to others....
There is never 0 potential for escalation in a world political context. The question is how realistic it is...
And Pakistan and Iran are not really best buddies. There is also the potential of them attacking each other. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/world/iran-pakistan-attacks-tensions-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html
Furthermore: From a few weeks ago, we already know that it doesn't need Iran for India and Pakistan to attack each other... Last time, it did not end in a world war.