The trench warfare and heavy artillery on Ukraine’s battlefields in 2022 doesn’t look much like the war by air and sea that began when the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
But similarities between the two conflicts soon became evident and remain so almost three months later.
In both, the country with the more powerful military has been unable to vanquish its adversary. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia expected a quick victory when he launched his “special military operation,” more than four years ago. President Trump initially vowed that the “little excursion” against Iran, which started on Feb. 28, would last four to five weeks.
“For both Russia and for the United States, there’s a lot of unmet expectations about their military operations,” said Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iran and Russia and a professor at Sciences Po, the elite social sciences university in Paris, attributing it to “the hubris on both sides.”
Over the last several days, negotiations have produced progress toward an initial plan for peace between Iran and the United States, though with much uncertainty about the details. Whether or not an agreement is reached, the war will have provided lessons, along with the conflict in Ukraine, on the evolution of modern warfare.
Technology reshaping warfare
Asymmetrical tactics have helped both Ukraine and Iran hold off stronger forces with which they could not compete in a conventional miliary confrontation.
Iran, for instance, struck at the United States by attacking its allies. It instilled fear in Persian Gulf states by sending one-way attack drones to hit military bases and energy facilities in countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It has also used the threat of sea drones and small armed speedboats to keep a chokehold on the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
Ukraine has assassinated Russian military officials in Moscow and regularly struck oil facilities, the lifeblood of the Russian economy. It has also used sea drones to neutralize Russia’s much bigger Black Sea navy.
Perhaps most indelibly, experts said, the two conflicts demonstrate how innovation and technology are reshaping warfare.
The United States has turned to drone-detecting systems loaded with artificial intelligence to protect the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to a person familiar with the agreement. Those systems were developed by Ukraine to defend itself from Russia.
In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah is attacking Israeli troops with explosive drones controlled by fiber-optic cables, like those commonly used in the war in Ukraine.
Layered systems of sensors, guided missiles and drones — and, in many cases, A.I.-enabled technology — that were honed in Ukraine and deployed in the Gulf, “are likely to rapidly proliferate around the world,” said Michael Kofman, a military expert and senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In both wars, “we see the advent of mass precision on the battlefield,” Mr. Kofman said. Already, he said, Hezbollah and combatants in Mali have turned to similarly cheap and easily built technology, showing that such systems “will democratize access to mass precision on the battlefield for middle and small powers.”
Similar attack strategies
The fighting in the Middle East before the cease-fire took effect in early April featured the kind of drone swarms combined with ballistic missile attacks that officials and experts said debuted in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iran delivered one-way Shahed attack drones to Russia in 2022, which Moscow used to strike Ukraine. That same model has been launched against Gulf countries by Iran this year as Russia is returning the favor with some military support to Iran. The extent of that support remains unclear, but according to U.S. officials, it includes shipping drone parts across the Caspian Sea.
Ms. Grajewski noted “some cooperation” between Russia and Iran in manipulating global location systems to confuse the opposition’s targeting guidance. Some ships linked to Iran appear to have recently spoofed locator trackers in the Strait of Hormuz — mirroring a long-honed tactic of Russia’s illicit shadow fleet of energy tankers — to evade detection by the U.S. Navy.
Russian anti-jamming equipment was found in an Iranian drone targeting a British base in Cyprus in March. European officials and experts are concerned Moscow will supply weapons if stalled peace talks break down and Iran resumes strikes across the region.
“We’ve seen evidence of Russia helping Iran with its attacks,” the British defense minister, John Healey, said in April at a meeting of allies who are sending military support to Ukraine.
He did not describe that evidence but added, “Putin wanted us distracted by the conflict in the Middle East.”
Diplomatic ties
The Iran war has strained some alliances, most notably between the Trump administration and Europe, where many leaders believe the conflict is unnecessary and unlawful.
It has also set off a worldwide scramble for energy supplies, with some countries turning to Russia for illicit but available oil and gas. And it has delayed the Russia-Ukraine peace process by diverting the United States’ attention to the Middle East.
“I believe they were drinking Champagne in the Kremlin when President Trump started the war in Iran,” said Danylo Lubkivsky, director of the Kyiv Security Forum and a former Ukrainian deputy foreign minister.
But the war in Iran has also produced some surprising alliances, most evident in the new partnerships Ukraine has forged with Gulf states.
In April, Ukraine announced new security agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those kinds of ties would have been unlikely several years ago when some of those Gulf states had previously sought to maintain neutral relations with Russia.
Kyiv wants to trade its drone technology and training assistance in return for Middle East diplomatic backing, energy deals and advanced air-defense systems, said Jana Kobzova, co-director of the European Security Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Zelensky is hoping “to turn this crisis into an opportunity,” she said.
At the least, Ms. Kobzova said, agreements with oil-rich states that include the sale of drone technology to them could prove lucrative to Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industry.
Europe has been a lifeline for Ukraine since the United States mostly stopped donating weapons and equipment to Kyiv last year.
Its countries have bought weapons from the United States to send to Ukraine, and last month the European Union unlocked a loan of 90 billion euros, about $106 billion, to help Kyiv endure the ongoing war.
But Europe’s ability to continue to provide robust support may depend on whether the shortage of fuel and goods caused by the Iran war drags down European economies, a situation that would worsen if peace is not achieved.
Riccardo Alcaro, an expert at the Institute of International Affairs in Rome, said the continuing standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping lane for 20 percent of the global energy supply, illustrated how Iran can pose as significant a threat to Europe as does the one on its doorstep, in Ukraine.
“The Ukraine war is still Europe’s main front,” said Mr. Alcaro, whose research focuses on Europe and Iran. “But the Iran war is not a secondary front, in the sense that it is really, really, really impacting Europe’s ability to contribute to its first priority — which is Ukraine.”
Lara Jakes, a Times reporter based in Rome, reports on conflict and diplomacy, with a focus on weapons and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. She has been a journalist for more than 30 years.
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