The Ukraine and Iran Wars Have Merged, Arguably To Ukraine's Benefit

Governments tend to observe each other and then employ similar tactics and strategies which appear to work. What Russia and Iran have done against Ukraine - drones, mercenaries, grain, oil export and energy infrastructure attacks - are deployed by Iran against the US, but now also being used by the US and Israel against Iran with anti-drone and electronic warfare assistance from Ukraine. 

And while much verbiage has been deployed about the benefit of the Iran war to Russia, the reality may be far more complicated. Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russia's crucial oil export assets, possibly degrading that source of capital by as much as 40%. In addition, the lucrative deals Ukraine has signed with Persian Gulf nations to defend themselves from Iranian drone and missile attacks will help fund Ukraine's burgeoning defense industry. In the meantime, with so much global attention on Iran, especially from the US, Moscow has had to pivot somewhat so its prime ally is not humiliated. This distraction has given Ukraine some advantages so far this year as the Kremlin's winter and spring offensives have both faltered, due in no small part to the Russian leadership's need for mindshare devoted to Iran. The end of neither conflict seems near, but their increasingly conjoined interests reflect the global political economy. JL

Seth Frantzman reports in The National Interest, Julian Borger and Pyotr Sauer report in The Guardian:

The two conflicts are beginning to merge. Weapons used on one battlefield inform decisions on another. Iran and Russia have long been close friends and partners. From missiles and drones to nuclear power and air defense (Iran acquired Russia’s S-300 air defense systems in 2016), the countries are deeply entwined. In both conflicts, Iranian-designed drones have played a key role. So have global shipping and energy markets. To limit Russia’s windfall from Iran war induced price increases, Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. The security relationships Ukraine has now cultivated in the Gulf could provide a vital source of finance for Ukraine’s arms industry

The Iran and Ukraine wars are becoming more intertwined with every passing week – to the point that some analysts argue the two conflicts are beginning to merge.

Quite how each war will affect the trajectory of the other is hard to predict, but it is already clear that their interconnectedness is drawing more countries into both cauldrons, extending an arc of instability that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

From Ukraine’s point of view, the connection is nothing new. Russia began using Iranian-made Shahed drones in September 2022, seven months into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. What is new is Moscow’s return of the favour to Tehran, with a reported flow of intelligence, targeting and drones to Iran after the US-Israeli assault on 28 February. 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tour of the Middle East over the past few weeks has cemented another cross-regional link between the two conflicts, sealing agreements to provide drone and anti-drone technology and training to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, while initiating security talks along similar lines with Jordan.

The two wars are also converging through global energy markets. The initial impact of the attack on Iran, along with Tehran’s response in closing down Gulf shipping through the strait of Hormuz, favoured Russia through a spike in oil and gas prices.

For Moscow, the increase in demand has provided an economic lifeline just as its economy was coming under growing strain, prompting the government to drop plans for budget cuts.

The aftermath of a Shahed drone attack on Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Wednesday. Tehran has been supplying the weapons to Moscow and potentially receiving updated versions in return. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

To stabilise the market, the Trump administration has eased some restrictions on Russian oil exports that were intended to pressure the Kremlin over its war in Ukraine. Furthermore, Asian countries, particularly those hit by the closure of the strait of Hormuz – including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka – are now lining up to buy Russian oil.

In an effort to limit Russia’s windfall, Ukraine has in recent days intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. A Reuters estimate last week said up to 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity had been halted after mass Ukrainian drone attacks.

The conflicts have become so interlocked that what happens in one theatre of war now has a tangible impact on the other – a fact emphasised by European states, anxious to avoid being sucked into a spiralling Middle East conflagration. The UK defence secretary, John Healey, pointed to Putin’s “hidden hand” behind Iran’s drone tactics.

“These wars are very much interlinked,” said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “So if America wants the war in the Middle East to stop – Iran to stop attacking them – they should also put the pressure on Russia so that they are not able to help them.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his wife, Olena, honour the memory of the victims of the Russian occupation of Bucha. Photograph: Ukrainian presidential press service/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration has been reluctant to acknowledge the linkage, maintaining preferential treatment of Moscow, easing sanctions, allowing a Russian shipment of oil to break the US blockade on Cuba even as ever stronger evidence emerged of Russian assistance to Iran in the midst of the war.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, insisted Russia’s role in Iran was not “impeding or affecting” US operations. “The Americans don’t want to interlink the two wars and punish Russia,” said Hanna Notte, the director for Eurasia at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.

There are signs that the US is putting more pressure on Kyiv for its attacks on Russian oil facilities, keeping the oil price high, than on Moscow for supplying lethal weaponry to Iran to fire at US and allied targets. The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Trump had threatened to cut off weapon supplies to Ukraine if European allies did not help reopen the Hormuz strait.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received “signals” from partners urging it to scale back strikes on Russian energy facilities. He insisted that the strikes would continue as long as Russian attacks targeted Ukraine’s own energy infrastructure.

Russia’s deepening involvement in Iran’s defence, however, will put new pressure on Trump’s pro-Russian inclinations. For the Kremlin, support to Iran offers a chance to rebuild its geopolitical standing after a series of setbacks.

Dragged down by its war in Ukraine, the Kremlin was forced to stand largely on the sidelines as key allies fell – including the toppled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who was captured in a US operation and removed from power

“Once it became clear that the US was struggling to convert military superiority into political gains, Russia saw an opportunity to expose American weakness,” Notte said. “It is in their interests to give the Americans a bloody nose and prolong the war.”

Zelenskyy has alleged that Moscow provided Iran with intelligence based on satellite imagery in the run-up to an Iranian drone and missile strike on US planes and personnel at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia on Friday, injuring 12 Americans.

Russia is also suspected of sending drones, perhaps including Gerans, Moscow’s own update on the Shahed, in road shipments disguised as humanitarian convoys.

Smoke billows from an oil warehouse in the outskirts of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, after a suspected drone strike. Drone attacks by pro-Iran armed groups have usually been intercepted by air defences. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Ukraine’s bloodily earned experience of Shaheds and Gerans made Zelenskyy a sought-after guest in Gulf capitals. He has seized the opening, offering to export low-cost, battlefield-tested technologies to help address local shortages of weapons, while showcasing a new global role for Ukraine: no longer just a recipient of aid, but a supplier.

Kyiv is not just selling interceptors, but also software, electronic warfare systems and maritime drones. “We are taking a systemic approach to this,” Zelenskyy said.

Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House thinktank, said Ukraine’s new security network in the Gulf gives the country more clout with Washington – a riposte to Trump’s repeated jibe that Kyiv has “no cards” in its battle with Russia.

“Ukraine is trying to show that our cards are about being a very robust, agile, fast-adapting and producing economy that can both defend against Russia and also defend other countries through weapons system sales,” Lutsk said

 

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She added that the security relationships cultivated in the Gulf could provide a vital alternative source of desperately needed finance for Ukraine’s arms industry, at a time when EU funds have been blocked by Hungary.

“Ukraine has production capabilities but not enough investment. It can produce more, but it doesn’t have enough orders or capital,” Lutsevych said. “So this actually comes as a great opportunity to use these production facilities.”

The interconnected regional conflicts are still some way off from becoming a world war, argued William Spaniel, an associate political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh, “but it is further connecting the battlefield outcomes, and it will have longer lasting implications for how the battle lines are divided”.

Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser in the first Trump administration, argued that if modern forms of warfare such as cyber, hybrid and other grey zone operations are taken into account, a world war has been under way for some time and has been brought closer to a boil by the Iran war.

“I think it meets that threshold for a system-changing war,” Hill, now at the Brookings Institution, said. “There’ll be all kinds of new configurations of countries that will have sprung up.”

She pointed to the unpredictable impact on global stability of oil and fertiliser shortages, giving a wide array of other states motives to become involved in the Middle East, and the question of whether China would take advantage of Washington’s distraction to take action against Taiwan.

“We’ve got a ‘four horses of the apocalypse’ going here … and I just feel that people are sleepwalking into it.”On March 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the Persian Gulf for meetings with countries that have been under Iranian drone and missile attacks for a month. In the UAE, he met with President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and in Saudi Arabia, he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He also went to Qatar. The trip highlights how the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran are linked. In both conflicts, Iranian-designed drones have played a key role. In addition, the meetings show how regional powers, especially those that are partners of the West, can play a key role during wartime.

There has been tension between the White House and Kyiv in the past, and this has also spilled over into questions about US policy toward Europe and Ukraine compared to Iran. This matters because it’s possible to view both the Ukraine War and the Iran War as compartmentalized, in different regions and involving different countries. One could view the Ukraine war as primarily a European war, while the Iran War is linked to the Middle East.

On the other hand, it’s also possible to see the wars as linked in many ways. For instance, Iran and Russia have long been close friends and partners. They have worked together in Syria supporting the Assad regime since 2015, when Russia intervened in Syria. Syria was a longtime client state of Russia, dating back to the Soviet era. When the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011 after the Arab Spring protests, the Iranians sent forces to Syria. Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani went to Russia in 2015 to encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene and save the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Russia-Iran cooperation in Syria is not the only way the two countries have been linked. From missiles and drones to civil nuclear power and air defense (Iran acquired Russia’s S-300 air defense systems in 2016), the countries are deeply entwined. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has led Moscow to focus primarily on the Ukraine front and devote less attention to the Middle East. Neither the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel nor the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 provoked a serious response from Moscow. Russia has largely sat on the sidelines of the Iran War as well. However, appearances are deceptive. Iran’s drones have proven beneficial to Russia. The delta-wing-shaped Shahed-136 has provided Moscow with cheap, expendable drones to fling at Ukraine and overwhelm its defense. Instead of risking costly aircraft that Moscow may not be able to replace easily, the drones have terrorized Ukraine for years. The onslaught has forced Ukraine to adapt into one of the most advanced operators in counter-drone technology. 

When the United States and Israel began airstrikes on Iran on February 28, Tehran responded with attacks across the Middle East, including drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and other countries. Iran has targeted the UAE more than other countries in terms of the total number of attacks. Naturally, these countries now wish to consult with countries that have also suffered Iranian drone attacks, like Ukraine.

The National in the UAE noted that “Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday announced a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia, as he offers his country’s experience in fighting Iranian drones to Gulf countries now under fire.” Meanwhile, Zelensky noted on X, after he met with the president of the UAE, that “The President thanked our team for its work here in the Emirates. For Ukraine, this is also a matter of principle: terror must not prevail anywhere in the world. Protection must be sufficient everywhere. That is why we are open to joint work that, in a strategic perspective, will certainly strengthen our peoples and the protection of life in our countries.” 

Zelensky added that “unfortunately, have been under daily attack for four years of full-scale war. Ukrainians have developed an appropriate protection system that delivers a significant interception rate against enemy drones and missiles. This systematic approach and integration of experience is exactly what we are offering to our partners.” 

Neither region, Europe nor the Middle East, is a vacuum. Weapons used on one battlefield inform decisions on another. At the G7 meeting in France on March 27, the wars in Iran and Ukraine were both a focus of discussion. The United States is now focused more on Iran than Ukraine, which has led to some tensions with European countries and also tough comments about NATO from the White House. 

Whenever or in whatever manner these conflicts are resolved, their reverberations will affect the world order. In particular, they will have consequences for President Putin’s push for a multipolar world, with a diminished United States.