Ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy in the Caspian Sea, 2018. Photo from Khamenei.ir/Wikimedia Commons.

Are the wars in Iran and Ukraine converging? Some commentators think so. After Ukrainian drones attacked an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing one Iranian sailor, speculation soon began to spread that Iran would retaliate, possibly by launching a ballistic missile attack on Ukraine. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the incident “cannot go unanswered.” Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence supposedly issued a warning that “up to three medium-range ballistic missiles could be launched at military infrastructure facilities in Kyiv.”

The attack in question has yet to materialize. And indeed, it seems unlikely that it will. Iran has nothing to gain from taking on yet another enemy. Some believe, though, that Ukraine sees benefits in linking its war with Russia with that of the United States against Iran. If it can persuade the White House that the two are inextricably connected—even part and parcel of some broader confrontation between “democracy and autocracy”—then this could in theory lead to a substantial increase in military assistance from the Americans.

If one were to believe this theory, then the Iranian ship in the Caspian may have been deliberately targeted as a means of inviting Iranian retaliation so that Kyiv could then tell Washington that Ukraine and the US are, in effect, allies against common enemies. As Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute remarked: “Ukraine is not trying to just enter the war with Iran. Rather, it appears it is trying to merge the Ukraine war with the Iran war. Why? Because if these two wars merge, Ukraine will be a belligerent in the Iran war and America will be a belligerent in the Ukraine war. That is, the US will no longer just be arming........

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