Iran threatened to retaliate after Ukraine launched its first known strike against an Iranian target, bringing two major wars together and raising fears of further escalation.
Tehran’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that an attack on what it described as a commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea had killed one sailor and wounded another. The statement “strongly condemned” the attack and warned it could “inflame and expand the ongoing conflict”.
Ali Nikzad, Iran’s deputy speaker of parliament, said “this reckless act of the Ukrainian government will not go unanswered”.
Ukrainian officials confirmed the attack but said it was against a ship carrying weapons and was part of a wider campaign.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Kornitschuk, said: “The ship we attacked in the Caspian Sea contained components for drones and missiles that were on their way to Iran – not civilian cargo, as Iran claimed.
“This is not the first time we have hit such military targets, and of course, we can expect to hit them again. This is a legitimate military target, in our view.”
The Caspian is an inland sea shared by Russia and Iran that has been largely spared from Ukrainian drone attacks to date.
Relations between Kyiv and Tehran have been hostile for years as Iran has supplied thousands of drones that Russia has used to attack Ukraine. The incident on Saturday marks the first publicised case of direct hostilities and could mark an expansion of the conflict.
Iranian military ships on the Caspian Sea (Photo: Iranian Army/Reuters)Babak Taghvaee, an Iranian military journalist, said the regime was considering retaliation.
“Although the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force has made no official statement, it has reportedly conveyed to several members of parliament and journalists close to the regime that it is considering a retaliatory ballistic missile strike against a strategic target in Kyiv,” he told The i Paper, citing regime-aligned media sources.
“The fact that these remarks have been made unofficially may be intended to provide the regime with plausible deniability should such an attack eventually take place.”
Iran could theoretically hit targets in Ukraine with its long-range ballistic missiles, such as the Khorramshahr-4, which has a stated range of around 1, 250 miles. The regime aimed a missile at the US-UK Diego Garcia base more than 2,300 miles away during hostilities earlier this year.
Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran and Russia specialist at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said there were widespread fears among Iranian defence sources that the Ukrainian attack could have been in cooperation with the US and other Nato allies, and lead to Ukraine launching a large-scale drone campaign against infrastructure in Iran as it has in Russia.
A Ukrainian drone strike in St Petersburg on 24 July (Photo: Reuters)“The prevailing view is that the operation could not have taken place without at least a green light – if not direct guidance – from the US and Ukraine’s other Western partners,” he said.
“There is a degree of consensus in Tehran that Iran’s response will determine the trajectory of the confrontation and that a decisive response is required,” Azizi added.
“[Some] argue that Iran should consider carrying out similar direct attacks against Ukraine-linked vessels in other maritime arenas, or even launching direct missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure if such operations continue.”
“With each passing day, the war is evolving into an increasingly complex, multidimensional, and international conflict.”
The Ukrainian attack coincided with a statement from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky claiming to reveal new details of Russian support for Iranian attacks on US military bases in the Middle East, many of which have been severely damaged.
“I will instruct our intelligence to share with our partners the information we have regarding Russia’s new assistance to the Iranian regime,” he said. “Since the beginning of July, we have recorded active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and US military facilities located there.”
“At the same time, there is a clear correlation between Russia’s satellite imagery of these sites and Iranian strikes – both before the attacks, in preparation for them, and afterward, to assess the damage inflicted.
“On July 19 and 20 alone, four air bases fell within the area of interest of Russian satellites – two in Bahrain, one in Jordan, and one in Kuwait.”
Smoke rises from a Saudi Aramco oil facility after a Houthi attack on 25 July (Photo: social media/AFP/Getty)Independent analysts suggested the move against Iran could be intended to win favour from the US at a time when support for Ukraine is uncertain.
Colonel Markus Reisner, who studies the Ukraine war at the Theresian Military Academy in Austria, said Kyiv would expect “Trump to like it” and show it is a “better ally than Nato”.
But the attack coincided with a pause in US attack on Irans, with no recorded strikes over the weekend after 13 consecutive nights of bombing.
But violence continued in the region yesterday. An oil tanker exploded in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iranian state media attributed to the ship hitting a naval mine.
Conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-allied Yemeni militant group, the Houthis, also continued, with Houthi attacks sparking a blaze at Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil fields.
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