What began as two separate wars on two different continents has been dangerously converging into a single direction for months. The chain is now fully visible: Iran supplies drones to Russia to attack Ukrainian cities, Russia shares satellite intelligence with Iran so its missiles can more accurately strike US bases in the Middle East, and Ukraine attacks Iranian ships in the Caspian (it has already done so with two cargo ships) to cut that supply line. Starting from two regional conflicts, there is an increasing risk of escalation into a global war.
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The Caspian has become the point where the wars of Iran and Ukraine have physically collided, but the fusion threatens to go far beyond that inland sea. If Iran decides to respond militarily to the Ukrainian attack on its ships, Ukraine would formally be at war with a third actor, something unprecedented since the start of the Russian invasion. Sources close to the Tehran regime claim they have considered responding with a ballistic missile against Ukraine fired in a “symbolic” manner as a response, but diplomatic pressures have so far convinced the ayatollahs not to do so.
If Russia escalates its support to Tehran beyond intelligence exchange—with weapons systems, air cover, naval presence in the Caspian—the conflict would cease to be two parallel wars and become a war with connected fronts. The scenario that most worries analysts is not a deliberate decision to escalate, but a chain of cross-retaliations in which each response forces the next until no one remembers when the single war really began.
Why is the Caspian Sea important in this new phase of both conflicts? It is the largest lake in the world and has become since 2022 the great clandestine highway of the Russo-Iranian rearmament. Being an inland sea surrounded exclusively by Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, it is completely out of Western naval reach and practically invulnerable to international sanctions. Western analysts describe it as the ideal place for discreet military transfers and sanctions evasion: dark maritime traffic has surged since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and both Moscow and Tehran have perfected methods to hide shipments, routes, and real operators.
Through this route have flowed Iranian components (technology and designs) that feed the Russian Shahed drone factory in Alabuga, as well as nearly 13,000 tons of explosive material of Iranian origin that arrived in Russia through its closest entry point to the Caspian. Ukraine already attacked the Russian port of Olya in 2024, accusing it of being a logistical center for that traffic, and Israel struck the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali for the same reason. The most recent Ukrainian attack against two Iranian cargo ships in the Caspian is therefore not an improvisation: it is the logical reaction of a deliberate strategy to cut the supply line that has been feeding the war in Ukraine for years with weapons designed and manufactured in Tehran.
Background
The first toxic episode linking Ukraine with Iran was tragic and one-sided. Iran mistakenly shot down a Boeing 737 of Ukraine International Airlines in January 2020, killing 176 people. Although Tehran eventually admitted responsibility, the initial Iranian response resembled Russia’s after the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 over Donbas—denial, destruction of evidence—which permanently soured relations between the two countries. For Ukraine, Iran was already a hostile actor before the Russian invasion.
The brutal attack by Putin’s regime against its neighbor aligned Tehran with Moscow at levels of a war ally. In July 2022, the White House confirmed that Iran was about to deliver armed drones to Russia. From October 2022, Moscow used Iranian Shahed-136 drones, one of the most terrifying weapons of the war, in an attack on Kyiv that killed four civilians, including a six-month pregnant woman. For Ukraine, Iran became a de facto co-belligerent from that moment: its weapons killed Ukrainian civilians. Iran provided Russia with cheap and expendable ammunition to saturate Ukrainian defenses instead of risking costly aircraft. Russia has even installed a factory in Alabuga, 1,000 kilometers from Moscow, to produce more than 5,500 Shahed drones per month. The war in Ukraine has thus become the largest testing ground for the Iranian arsenal.
CONVINCING TRUMP
This is one of the lesser-known and most revealing episodes about Zelenski’s strategy to gain allies among Iran’s traditional enemies. In August 2025, the Ukrainian president brought to a closed meeting at the White House a presentation that included a map of the Middle East and explained how Iran threatened regional stability. Zelenski was offering Trump intelligence on Iran in exchange for continued support to Ukraine. It was the first step of a deliberate strategic repositioning. But Trump, always prone to believe Putin, did not pay much attention to the Ukrainian.
In Israel’s case, Kiev has also failed to obtain much support from Netanyahu’s government. Israel is the only Western democratic country that has not supplied weapons to Ukraine. The reason is historical: more than a million Israelis have Russian or Soviet passports or roots. Netanyahu has governed for years with the support of that community and cannot ignore their family ties to Russia. At the same time, Ukraine has the largest Jewish community in Europe, and Zelenski himself is Jewish. The war has painfully divided these communities. Moreover, Russia has regularly hosted Hamas delegations in Moscow without Israel raising its voice against the Kremlin.
The reality is that Benjamin Netanyahu has practiced a calculated balancing act for four years: keeping relations with Russia good enough to operate in Syrian areas previously occupied by the Russians, not irritating Washington enough to lose its support, and not committing to Ukraine enough to close any doors.
But this year’s war against Iran has made that balancing act impossible. For the first time, the strategic interests of Israel and Ukraine point in the same direction, and that is changing a relationship that for four years was one of the great enigmas of the war. That is why Netanyahu personally called Zelenski to start talks and why he sought his greeting at Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral this very week.
Ukrainians in the Gulf
In reality, both conflicts are already much more intertwined than they seem. In March 2026, just days after the start of the war between the US, Israel, and Iran, Ukraine deployed more than 200 military experts specialized in anti-drone defense in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Jordan. It was confirmation of a historic shift: the country that for four years had been the recipient of Western military aid suddenly became an exporter of security and an experienced partner. “Knowledge is not a drone, it is a comprehensive capability: strategy, system, and training,” Zelenski explained, emphasizing that Ukraine was offering not only technology but a complete defense model adapted to new threats.
What Ukraine brought to the Gulf was exactly what the countries in the region urgently needed and what the Pentagon acknowledged in a closed meeting before Congress it did not have: years of combat repelling massive waves of Shahed drones, the same ones Iran was now launching against oil infrastructure and US bases.
“For five years, Ukrainians have resisted the same type of attacks—ballistic missiles and drones—that the Iranian regime is currently carrying out in the Middle East,” Zelenski said in Jeddah, where he signed with Saudi Arabia a 10-year defense cooperation agreement including technology transfer, unit training, and future supply contracts. The irony is perfect: the drone that Iran designed, that Russia used to destroy Ukrainian cities, and that Ukraine learned to defend against, is now the same drone against which Ukraine teaches Gulf countries to protect themselves. Ukrainians shot down a good number of them in the Persian Gulf.
Russian Intelligence
The evidence is solid and comes from multiple independent sources: the Ukrainian intelligence assessment sent to Washington was reviewed by Reuters and reached these conclusions: Russian satellites conducted at least 24 detailed reconnaissance missions of military facilities and critical sites in 11 Middle Eastern countries between March 21 and 31, covering 46 targets.
Days after being photographed, the military bases and headquarters were attacked by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, in what the assessment describes as a clear pattern. A Western military source and a regional security source independently confirmed to this agency that their own intelligence also indicated intense Russian satellite activity in the region and that the images had been shared with Iran.
The latest example is recent: on July 19 and 20, four airbases fell within the area of interest of Russian satellites: two in Bahrain, one in Jordan, and one in Kuwait. “There is a clear correlation between Russian satellite images of these sites and Iranian attacks, both before the attacks during the preparation phase and afterward to assess inflicted damage,” Zelenski stated on July 25, announcing he would share that evidence with the US. When the press asked Trump on his plane about Russian intelligence aid to Iran, he said he would ask Putin directly.
What will be the next episode?