Alarmed western observers are warning that the wars in Ukraine and Iran could merge into a single region-wide conflict. Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian oil platform, a Russian missile boat, and sanctioned cargo ships in the Caspian Sea late last month. But in truth, Kyiv has regarded Iran as a combatant in the Ukraine war since the summer of 2022, when the first Shahed drones arrived in Russian-occupied Crimea and Kherson. These drones were accompanied by instructors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who trained Russian operators in their use. Moreover, this was not even Ukraine’s first strike on an Iranian target in the Caspian. On August 14, 2025, the eve of the Trump-Putin Alaska summit and well before the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, Ukraine struck a cargo vessel carrying drone parts and ammunition from Iran at the Russian port of Olya, near Astrakhan.
If Kyiv wants to, it can devastate the Caspian just as it has already devastated enemy shipping in the Black Sea
What has changed, though, is that America is now desperate to end the Iran war, which the White House had wrongly assumed would be short and victorious. Kyiv’s military support against Iran, however small-scale, is intended to win points with the Trump administration. Ukraine is desperate for US-made Patriot missile interceptors, which have been exhausted by the Iran war. Without Patriots, Ukrainian defenders have been unable to stop Russian ballistic missiles from slamming into strategically vital targets. The port of Odesa, for instance, has been almost entirely put out of action by Russian missiles over the past month, a disaster for Ukraine’s economy, its farmers, and world food supplies.
