The wars in Iran and Ukraine converged years ago

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Ruchi Kumar is an Istanbul-based journalist who covers conflict, politics and gender.

On July 25, a cargo ship anchored in the Caspian Sea, not too far from the mouth of the Volga River, became the target of Ukrainian drones. The attack left one crew member dead and caused considerable damage to the vessel.

The Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s intelligence agency, announced shortly after that they had targeted a sanctioned vessel that was being “used to transport military cargo to Russia.”

For months now, the Ukrainian military had shifted its offensive and had been targeting Russian interests on land and at sea, in an attempt to inflict damage, and with relative success, to the infrastructure enabling Russia’s invasion of its territory. In that sense, this attack was not out of the ordinary.

But this ship, named MV Anna, was not Russian, but Iranian.

The Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asserted that the targeted vessel was a commercial ship, demanding restitution and threatening a military response. He also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of dragging Europe into the continuing war in the Middle East. In political corridors in the West, many stakeholders and observers feared that the attack could trigger the convergence of the two of the world’s largest wars: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.’s attacks on Iran.

Analysis: Ukrainian strike on Iranian cargo ship blurs line between two wars

Despite the risk of escalation, diplomatic machinery kicked in, and the dispute was resolved by the following Tuesday. Iran was reportedly assured that the attack was unintentional. An Iranian military advisor said that Tehran’s plans to launch strikes at three Ukrainian sites were cancelled after an “apology” from Kyiv.

But the fact is that Ukraine and Iran are already engaged in a conflict, even if they haven’t directly faced each other on the battlefield. After all, Iran and Ukraine have both maintained support for each other’s enemies for years.

Iran has consistently backed the Russian military since before it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. Just months before President Vladimir Putin launched his “special operation” in Ukraine, in 2021, Iran sold $4-billion worth of weapons to Russia, most notably the Shahed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), fleets of suicide drones that Russia still uses on a near-daily basis and that wreak havoc in Ukrainian cities. And in 2023, for US$1.75-billion, Iran allowed Russia to produce its own drones based on the Iranian models called the Geran UAV. Russia now mass-produces more than 400 of these drones and similar variants a day at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia.

In 2025, Russia and Iran also signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty in Moscow, which facilitates not only military support but also intelligence-sharing and joint threat response.

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By aligning with Mr. Putin, extending its support for his invasion and directly supporting it with arms, Tehran effectively placed itself in confrontation with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, since the start of the U.S.’s war against Iran, Ukraine has shared its expertise and technology in intercepting Iranian drones and weapons with the United States and countries in the Gulf under attack from Iran. It has, after all, downed more than 44,000 Shahed drones as of 2025, and has even learned to do it on a budget. This technical defence support is a strategic response, aimed at weakening Russia’s allies.

And earlier this year, as mass demonstrations threatened the Iranian regime’s political control, Mr. Zelensky met with the exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who was also later invited to attend the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa.

Even if the Caspian Sea episode truly was “unintentional,” it is in keeping with Kyiv’s expanding military strategy of increasingly targeting Russian military supply chains, including warehouses, oil refineries and oil tankers transporting fuel and cargo linked to the military. Iran remains an integral part of these supply chains.

During the course of my own reporting in Ukraine, it became clear to me that Ukrainians view the Iranian regime as an accomplice to Russia’s war, and by extension, an aggressor. The sentiment was perhaps best expressed by Olexander Scherba, Ukraine’s ambassador in South Africa. Invited to offer condolences for the deaths of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranian leaders when the U.S.’s attacks began in March, he did not mince his words: “As military allies of the Russian Federation, the deceased leaders of Iran had on their hands the blood of thousands of Ukrainian citizens… as someone who has spent three years to the tune of Iran-created machines of death howling every night in the sky over Kyiv… I cannot help but wish for every culprit to meet the justice they deserve.”