Kyiv is dismissing threats of retaliation from Iran after Ukraine launched a drone strike over the weekend at an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukrainian forces had achieved “very good results” from long-range drone strikes against vessels used to transport military cargo between Iran and Russia.
Iranian officials identified the cargo ship as the Ana and denounced the drone attack by Ukraine, claiming that it had killed an Iranian sailor and injured several others. The state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency said the crewman, 23-year-old Nima Moradi, died from shrapnel wounds in the strike.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s acting foreign minister, said Iran has no standing to claim status as an innocent victim.
“The regime in Tehran is a direct accomplice to Russian aggression against Ukraine, fueling Moscow’s criminal war with weapons that have killed Ukrainians since 2022,” Mr. Sybiha said.
On Monday, Ebrahim Azizi, the chairman of Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, warned that attacking Iran comes at a cost.
“Ukraine may soon come to understand that Iran does not leave its actions unanswered. The list of those who miscalculated continues to grow,” Mr. Azizi said on X.
Officials in Tehran denied that the Ana was transporting military equipment between the two countries that have become close allies since Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022. Iran said it was carrying rolled steel sheet cargo from Russia’s Astrakhan Port to Iran’s Anzali Port when it was struck.
Ukraine said the ship was a legitimate military target.
“The ship we attacked contained components for drones and missiles that were on their way to Russia, and not civilian goods as Iran claimed,” Yevgeny Korynchuk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, told the country’s N12 news channel. “This is not the first time we have hit such military targets, and, of course, we can expect to hit them again.”
Mr. Sybiha said Tehran wants to shift attention away from Russian attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea that are threatening global food security. “It will not succeed,” he said.
Ukraine believes that its war against Russian invaders is fundamentally linked to the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran. It has framed the military theaters as two fronts in a global conflict against autocratic states.
“Since the beginning of July, we have recorded active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and U.S. military forces located there. These images subsequently appear in Iran,” Mr. Zelenskyy said Saturday. “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 afterwards to assess the damage inflicted.”
