On the night of Friday, July 25th, an incident occurred in the Caspian Sea that, within days, sparked a diplomatic crisis between Kyiv and Tehran. Ukrainian drones struck a Russian missile boat and two cargo ships suspected of carrying Iranian military cargo to Russia. Tehran claims the attacked vessel was civilian and that a sailor was killed in the attack. Kyiv counters that the target was clearly military.
Cwhat actually happened
Security Service of Ukraine she informedthat its drones hit the Russian missile boat of Project 12418 “Molniya” and two cargo ships covered by international sanctions. President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed operation on Telegram, writing about “very good results” of long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea.
Although the Ukrainian side did not immediately provide the names of the vessels, reports indicate they were the Port Olya 2 and the Begej. Both vessels are Russian-owned and both are subject to sanctions imposed in connection with the war against Ukraine. The Port Olya 2 was previously reportedly used to transport military cargo from Iran. Kyiv claims the Begej was carrying ammunition, artillery shells, bulletproof vests, and helmets, and its crew disabled its AIS system during voyages between Russian and Iranian ports to conceal the vessel’s movements.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevhen Korneychuk, went a step further in a statement to Israeli television station N12. He said that the attacked ship contained drone and missile components destined for Russia, contrary to Tehran’s claims about its civilian cargo. He added that this was yet another, or rather, not the only, such target Ukraine intends to attack. Ukraine and Israel, as he put it, are fighting the same enemy, just from different sides of a single “axis of evil.”
Iran is threatening, but its options are limited
Tehran’s reaction was swift and harsh. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi he wrote on X that Zelenskyy had attacked an Iranian merchant vessel, killing a sailor, and accused the Ukrainian president of acting on Israel’s orders to drag Europe into war. The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned the highest-ranking Ukrainian diplomat in Tehran, where the incident was described as a hostile and criminal attack.
The head of Iran’s national security committee in parliament, Ebrahim Azizi, warned that Iran would not leave actions aimed at its interests unanswered, and Ukraine “will soon find out.” Former Iranian MP Nezameddin Mousavi put it even more bluntly, saying that the Caspian “fireworks” should be responded to in the Black Sea.
But the experts with whom talked Radio Svoboda, seem to agree on one thing: Iran’s threats are louder than it can actually strike. Saeid Golkar of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, an expert on Iran’s armed forces, assessed that Tehran has very limited options for demonstrating military force against Ukraine. He believes indirect actions are more likely: cyberattacks, intelligence operations, support for Russian strikes, or attacks on Iranian interests abroad, rather than a classic military operation.
Nate Swanson of the Atlantic Council, previously responsible for Iranian policy at the US National Security Council, shares a similar view. He noted that Iran’s rhetoric toward Ukraine sounds far more threatening than its actual potential, and a symbolic response is more likely than opening a new front. Neither Kyiv nor Tehran seems to care about that.
The director of the Ukrainian Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Ihor Semywolos, went even further in his analysis. According to him, Iran simply lacks the tools for a direct military response. It does not share a border with Ukraine, and its operational potential is focused on the conflict with the US and Israel in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea region. A more realistic scenario, he believes, is rhetorical escalation without concrete action, or perhaps an asymmetric response via proxies or Russia, including cyberattacks. Semyvolos also points out that Iran possesses an extensive network of hacktivist groups and state cyber actors (over 60 are said to exist) capable of attacking industrial infrastructure: power grids, water treatment plants, and elevators.
Kyiv Seeks De-escalation, But Doesn’t Back Down From Its Assessment
On Tuesday, July 28, acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha called Araghchi. As he himself he wrote On X, the conversation was frank, and its main goal was to avoid unnecessary escalation. Sybiha emphasized that all of Ukraine’s actions were solely aimed at defending the country against Russian aggression and were never aimed at civilian ships or civilians. He also appealed to Iran to refrain from steps leading to escalation and to stop supporting the Russian war.
This, however, does not change Kyiv’s position regarding the very nature of the goal. Zelensky in an interview with the British station Sky News He recalled that Iran had already provided Russia with Shahed drones at the outset of the full-scale invasion and now plans to provide it with ballistic missiles as well. The Ukrainian president went even further, claiming that Russia was assisting Iran in attacks on American military facilities in the Middle East and the Gulf states by providing Tehran with satellite imagery used, among other things, to assess the effectiveness of Iranian strikes. According to him, on July 19 and 20, four air bases came under the radar of Russian satellites: two in Bahrain and one each in Jordan and Kuwait.
Washington sees it somewhat differently. President Donald Trump stated that the leaders of China and Russia had assured him that they would not supply weapons to Iran, adding, however, that such a step would be “very bad” for them and contrary to their interests. The two presidents’ assessments clearly diverge, and this comes just before Zelensky’s meeting with Trump at the White House, scheduled for July 28.
Why is this not the first time this has happened?
It’s worth remembering that the attacks from before the weekend weren’t the first Ukrainian strikes against targets in the Caspian Sea. The Russian Caspian Flotilla, numbering 28 vessels and stationed near Makhachkala, some 1,300 kilometers from Ukrainian-controlled territory, had previously launched missiles from there at Ukrainian targets. Hudson Institute expert Luke Coffey notes that Ukraine has already attacked at least 12 Russian warships during a full-scale war, though the scale of the damage in many cases remains unclear.
The Israeli context is also interesting. On March 18th, about three weeks after the launch of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, Israeli aircraft allegedly struck the port of Bandar-Enzeli in the north of the country, attacking Iranian naval vessels. Some experts, including Golkar, do not rule out that Ukrainian forces may have used Israeli intelligence in last weekend’s operation. Israel possesses extensive reconnaissance capabilities against Iran, and Ukraine has an interest in disrupting military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow. However, neither side has officially confirmed this.
What’s next?
Nicole Grajewski of Sciences Po in Paris points out something easily overlooked in the frenzy of news: Washington, for some reason, strongly avoids showing that Russia is involved in the war with Iran, and Ukrainian attempts to link the two conflicts may only complicate matters. The more these two wars intertwine, the harder it will be to justify certain decisions concerning Ukraine that are simultaneously linked to Iran, and, as Golkar notes, this works both ways. Disrupting Iran’s military cooperation with Russia is in the broad interest of the US, but it also forces Washington to juggle relations with Ukraine, Israel, its Gulf partners, and Iran itself, all without risking a broader regional escalation.
For now, the most likely scenario, according to Ukrainian and Western analysts, is verbal escalation without real military action by Iran. But this doesn’t necessarily mean peace. A cyberattack or a strike on critical infrastructure doesn’t have to be spectacular to cause real damage.
Sources: official Facebook profile of the Security Service of Ukraine / official Telegram profile of Volodymyr Zelensky / official profile of Ihor Semyvolosand on Facebook / official profile of Abbas Araghchi on X / official profile of Andriy Sybiha on X / radiosvoboda.org / nv.ua / pap.pl / rbc.ua / news.sky.com
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