In a dramatic sign of military escalation in the Ukraine war, Iran appears ready to ship hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia to assist Moscow’s increasingly aggressive campaign to declare victory in the East.  While Iran and Russia already enjoy an active military alliance in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, Tehran thus far has steered clear of active involvement in Ukraine, in part to avoid antagonizing the United States during sensitive re-negotiations of the US-Iran nuclear treaty.

But that strategic calculation may well have changed following reports two weeks ago that the Pentagon, for the first time, was planning to sell armed “Gray Eagle” drones to Ukraine to support deep-penetration attacks on Russia’s slowly advancing ground forces.  Moscow, sensing a fresh battlefield advantage and anxious to press on amid global condemnation, needs all the allies it can get, even if that ally is a repressive Islamic regime facing condemnation of its own.  By rushing to Moscow’s aid, Iran now has a fresh opportunity to curry favor with a Great Power, heightening its own visibility and stature on the world stage.

In the short term, Iran’s UAV shipments to Russian forces in Ukraine aren’t likely to change much on the battlefield.  For one thing, Pentagon officials expect only some of Iran’s drones to be “weapons capable,” and they may not be armed with sophisticated munitions, not yet at least.  Moreover, Russian forces will require extensive Iranian training and technical support to actually deploy their new UAV systems, so they won’t be fully deployable anytime soon.

Once up and running, though, Iran’s UAVs could help Russia better identify and target Ukraine government forces and ferret out the numerous concentrations of dug-in resistance forces that continue to slow Russia’s ground advance.  Iran’s latest generation of drones come equipped with highly sophisticated, satellite-enhanced Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) capability, developed over two decades through one of the world’s most advanced drone development programs.  Iran’s drones can anticipate and track enemy movements at a distance of 500 kms. and can now stay airborne for 24 hours at a time.  It’s an impressive capability.

The other latent danger is that Iran’s new drone shipments could spur further military escalation, especially if Washington – as may now be more likely – follows suit by approving the pending Gray Eagle sales.  The Biden administration, anxious to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia, has ruled out the establishment of a “no fly” zone as well as the sale of sophisticated US jet aircraft to the Ukraine government, despite increasingly urgent pleas from the Ukraine government. Drones, it seems, may well turn out to be the least risky and most politically palatable means of answering those pleas.

If so, Ukraine’s largely ground-based war could soon shift, in part, to the air, with two warring nations, for the first time ever, testing out and evaluating drone warfare in a more conventional battlefield setting.  The good news?  No one expects competing US and Iranian drone shipments to derail the two countries’ ongoing nuclear treaty negotiations.  But they could well hand Iran another bargaining chip in those negotiations.  And as Iran’s drones prove themselves in Ukraine, assuming they do, more countries as well as insurgent groups on multiple continents will likely request them, giving the Islamic regime more allies and local proxies to launch attacks on US allies.

Even before Iran announced its Russian drone sale, Pentagon officials said they were worried about Iran’s use of drones as a tool of “coercive” diplomacy to manipulate pieces on the global chessboard and to expand its strategic influence.   They should be.  Washington, which first pioneered drone warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, has yet to fashion an effective response.

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