A Ukrainian strike last weekend on an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea has underscored the links between the wars that the two countries are fighting, raising tensions between them as well as the risk of more direct confrontation.<\/p>\n
Ukraine said the ship was carrying military equipment between Iran and Russia. Iranian officials said it was a commercial vessel, and it accused Ukraine of killing a sailor in the attack.<\/p>\n
Iranian officials threatened retaliation in a series of statements<\/a> and comments<\/a> to the news media. Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, snapped back<\/a>, telling Iran it had \u201cno standing to pretend to be a victim\u201d given its military support for Russia in its war with Ukraine.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a look at how Iran and Ukraine became adversaries through two separate wars \u2014 and why their indirect conflict now risks becoming a direct one.<\/p>\n Russia hit Ukraine with Iranian drones.<\/p>\n Iran and Russia have had a close military relationship for decades. The most visible recent example of this is the long-range attack drones that Tehran has supplied to Moscow.<\/p>\n Russia launched swarms of the drones<\/a> across Ukraine within months of its 2022 invasion, to deadly effect. Russia later began manufacturing its own versions of the Iranian drones.<\/p>\n The United States has accused Iran of supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles<\/a> as well. And Ukraine said Iran had sent trainers<\/a> to help the Russian military use drone systems, a claim that Iran denied.<\/p>\n The widespread use of drones, particularly the relatively cheap types provided by Iran, transformed the war in Ukraine and, more broadly, changed how military planners assess the needs of modern armies. It also forced Ukraine to develop counter-drone technologies<\/a> that analysts say now rival conventional air defense systems.<\/p>\n Ukraine helped defend Gulf states against Iran.<\/p>\n Four years after Russian unleashed those Iranian drones against Ukraine, Kyiv has now brought its hard-earned expertise in countering them to the Middle East.<\/p>\n After the United States and Israel began their war with Iran in late February, the Iranian military launched waves of drones at U.S. military targets in Gulf countries. Ukraine saw that as an opening to showcase and export its low-cost anti-drone systems.<\/p>\n President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in March that more than 200 Ukrainian military experts had been sent to the Middle East<\/a> to help defend allies against Iranian drones. \u201cWe do not want this terror of the Iranian regime against its neighbors to succeed,\u201d he said during a speech in Britain\u2019s Parliament.<\/p>\n Ukraine has also sealed defense deals<\/a> with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates focused on countering Iranian missile and drone threats.<\/p>\n Are the wars converging?<\/p>\n Ukraine has increasingly portrayed its war with Russia and the war in the Middle East as intertwined, saying Iran and Russia were aiding each other in their respective conflicts.<\/p>\n On Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine\u2019s intelligence services had gathered evidence that Russia was providing Iran with satellite surveillance of Gulf states and U.S. military bases in the region, helping Tehran plan and carry out attacks. He said Ukraine would share the intelligence with its Western allies.<\/p>\n On the same day, Ukraine struck the Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, accusing it of transporting military cargo between Iran and Russia, without specifying in which direction \u2014 the clearest suggestion yet that Kyiv\u2019s long-running proxy conflict with Tehran could evolve into a more direct confrontation.<\/p>\n Mr. Zelensky may also use the attack to try to persuade President Trump that Ukraine and the United States share the same enemy and to advocate for closer military ties. The Ukrainian leader met with Mr. Trump on Tuesday afternoon<\/a> and said the two leaders discussed securing more air defense capabilities for Kyiv.<\/p>\n In a post on X<\/a>, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, tied the attack on the ship directly to the Middle East conflict, calling the strike \u201ca blatant U.N. Charter violation\u201d and claiming it had been \u201cdone at Israel\u2019s behest to drag Europe into its war.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Araghchi added that he had spoken with both the European Union\u2019s top diplomat and Russia\u2019s foreign minister to make clear that the attack \u201cCANNOT GO UNANSWERED.\u201d<\/p>\n The first signs of a diplomatic off-ramp appeared Tuesday night, as Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Sybiha spoke by phone, with both calling for de-escalation. \u201cOur position remains unchanged: Europe and the Middle East deserve stability, security, and peace,\u201d Mr. Sybiha said in a social media post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Leily Nikounazar and Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Ukrainian strike last weekend on an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea has underscored the links…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6468,7902,197,417,882,415,42,25,7022,26,180],"class_list":["post-22718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-arms-trade","tag-caspian-sea","tag-defense-and-military-forces","tag-drones-pilotless-planes","tag-foreign-aid","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-russia","tag-ships-and-shipping","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states-international-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}