Ukraine is trying to drag Iran into its war.

Good day, spectators,

Something unusual happened in the Caspian Sea this week. A body of water that has remained relatively stable for decades suddenly became the site of a military attack. Ukraine struck an Iranian commercial vessel, killing at least one sailor and wounding several others. The ship, laden with steel, was sailing from Russia’s Astrakhan Port to Iran’s Anzali Port when it was hit.

The immediate response from Tehran was predictable. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the attack a ‘blatant UN Charter violation’. The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires, formally delivered a note of protest, and warned that ‘actions targeting the lives and property of Iranian citizens will not go unanswered’.

But the question that I think many of us who heard the news are thinking about is not whether Iran is angry but: what the hell is Ukraine playing at?

Ukraine is losing. Badly. And it is flailing.

The manpower shortage in Ukraine has reached crisis point. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko put it bluntly last month:

‘They have run out of people.’

This is not propaganda. It is a fact. Ukraine’s military is struggling to recruit enough soldiers to hold the line. The government has been forced to lower the conscription age, introduce new contract systems, and acknowledge that mobilisation is ‘the biggest challenge for the entire nation’. Desertion rates are climbing. The streets are filled with videos of forced conscription.

Here’s an archive of 10,000+ such videos.

The morale of new recruits, many of whom have been pressed into service against their will, is non-existent.

I won’t dwell on this today but this is the context for everything Ukraine is doing right now. It is throwing the kitchen sink at anything that might change the equation.

Consider the recent attacks on Wildberries. which is Russia’s largest e-commerce platform, often described as the ‘Amazon or Temu of Russia.’ Ukraine has struck at least five Wildberries warehouses in the past two weeks, killing at least nine civilians and damaging approximately 10% of the company’s logistics capacity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the logistics centres were ‘involved in supplying the Russian army with drone components, navigation equipment and other gear’ which, let’s be honest, could mean bits of plastic and compasses…like on Amazon.

But even if it were true, the logic is transparent: Ukraine is targeting civilian infrastructure in the hope of exerting economic pressure on Russia. It is attacking the Russian consumer economy, trying to make life difficult for ordinary Russians. This is not a war-winning strategy. This is the act of a country that has no other options. A country that cannot push Russia out of the east militarily so is now trying to make Russians miserable.

So let’ s pop back to the Caspian Sea. Why would Ukraine attack an Iranian commercial vessel?

Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi has a theory: Ukraine is acting at Israel’s behest, ‘to drag Europe into its war’. And I have no trouble believing this theory considering Zelensky is a staunch Zionist.

But the truth is, I think it is more likely that Ukraine is acting on its own initiative, trying to demonstrate its usefulness to the United States at a time when the US has ‘lost interest’ in the country. (At least publicly, its interests in Ukraine remain.)

Zelensky is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump tomorrow on the 29th of July. The US, which has just paused its bombing campaign against Iran, is reportedly concerned about the worsening economic and energy crisis and the growing shortage of anti-aircraft missiles to protect its bases in the Middle East and so Ukraine sees an opportunity.

By attacking Iran, it’s trying to show the US that it can be a useful ally in a new theatre of conflict. It is trying to prove its worth. It is desperately trying to link its own dying war to a larger conflict, hoping that if the world goes to war with Iran, American attention and materiel will flow back toward its collapsing frontlines.

Here is where the desperation becomes almost farcical for me. The Western narrative claims that Iran supplies missiles to Russia. This is false. Iran supplied a small number of Shahed drones at the beginning of the war and allowed Russia access to the designs so it could manufacture its own. That is it. No missiles or ongoing supply relationship that we know of.

But let’s imagine for a moment that this narrative were true. Let’s say Iran was actively arming Russia. By that logic, Russia would be entirely justified in attacking the countries supplying Ukraine with vast quantities of weapons. The US supplies everything from artillery shells to ATACMS missiles to F-16 fighters. Poland sends ammunition. France sends Caesar guns. Germany sends Leopard tanks. Germany alone has sent military aid worth billions.

If the West’s logic holds, Russia could attack Poland, attack France, attack Germany. Russia could sink commercial vessels carrying weapons to Ukraine. Russia could bomb NATO logistics hubs.

Russia does not do this. Russia shows restraint. Russia, for all its faults, has calculated that direct confrontation with NATO would be catastrophic and has therefore limited its response to the theatre of Ukraine itself.

Ukraine shows no such restraint. Ukraine, a country on its knees with no manpower left and no way to win its war, is now lashing out at third countries. It is attacking Iranian ships. It is bombing Russian shopping malls. It is trying to broaden a conflict it cannot win.

This is the act of a regime that has run out of ideas. It is the flailing of a puppet government that is beginning to realise that its master has grown tired of the war and is looking for an exit.

Iran is not Ukraine. Iran is not run by clowns who dance for Western approval. The entire Iranian government consists of highly educated academics and strategists who calculate their moves with care. Unlike Ukraine, which is desperately swinging at anything within reach, Iran will respond methodically. Iran will consider the consequences. Iran will escalate in measured, strategic ways.

Watch: Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Dr. Esmail Baghaei scolds President Zelensky after the attack on one of its commercial vessels.

Iranian officials have already warned that Ukraine ‘has joined the list of those who miscalculated’ and that ‘any point from which an act of aggression is launched against our country and territory will certainly become a legitimate target of our armed forces’. This is not empty rhetoric. Iran has proven it can strike deep, strike with precision, and strike without fear. It has an entire network of regional proxies at its disposal. It has missiles that can reach European territory.

Ukraine has just made itself a legitimate target for a country that knows exactly how to use that status. This is not a sign of strength from Kyiv. This is the desperate act of a regime that cannot win its own war and is now trying to drag the rest of the world into its mess.

The Western establishment is deluded by its own propaganda. It believed Ukraine could defeat Russia. It believed Iran would collapse under pressure. It believed it could wage wars indefinitely without consequences.

Now those consequences are arriving. Ukraine is collapsing. It has no manpower. It has no strategic options. So it is lashing out at Iran, hoping to broaden the conflict into a world war. It is hoping that if the world is on fire, America will have to stay engaged. It is hoping that chaos will save it.

Some might see this as the noble struggle for freedom that Western media loves to portray but really it is the dying gasp of a client state that has been used and discarded. This is what imperial miscalculation looks like when it finally meets reality.

The bombs are falling. The wars are spreading. And the people who created this mess are still in their offices, huffing their own farts, convinced that the next escalation will finally bring victory.

It won’t and it never does.

And on that thought, I’ll let you go,

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