Watch Webinar – Iran’s Two Fronts: Growing Links Between the Middle East and Ukraine Wars
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The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are converging. Iran has supplied Russia with drone technology battering Ukrainian cities while threatening U.S. forces and partners across the Middle East—and the connection runs deeper: Russia has provided Iran with satellite imagery and targeting intelligence, including the locations of U.S. warships and aircraft, enabling more precise Iranian strikes against American forces in the region.
Ukraine has begun striking back, hitting Iranian and Russian cargo vessels in the Caspian Sea on July 25 to disrupt Iran-Russia supply lines. Days later, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were in Washington for separate meetings with President Donald Trump—and the two spoke in person with one another for the first time in three years. Separately, Ukraine has emerged as the world’s leading laboratory for drone warfare and countermeasures—experience increasingly relevant to Israel, which has struggled to adapt to the fiber-optic drone threat now deployed by Hezbollah in Lebanon that was first pioneered on the Ukrainian battlefield.
The convergence raises urgent questions for U.S. strategy: how should Washington coordinate across two theaters increasingly shaped by the same adversary network? Can Ukraine and Israel translate their shared interest in countering Iran into meaningful coordination? And what does effective deterrence look like when the Iranian threat spans both fronts simultaneously?
To discuss the growing links between the Middle East and Ukraine wars and the implications for U.S. policy, JINSA hosted an exclusive webinar featuring JINSA Generals & Admirals Program Participants Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.), former Commander, U.S. European Command, and Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.), former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command.
JINSA Associate Director of Foreign Policy Ari Cicurel moderated the webinar.
Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.) Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.) is the former Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He participated in JINSA’s Generals and Admirals program in 2018. |
Lt Gen Thomas W. Bergeson, USAF (ret.) Lt Gen Thomas W. Bergeson is the former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command. He participated in JINSA’s Generals and Admirals program in 2023. |
Ari Cicurel
Ari Cicurel has been Associate Director of Foreign Policy at JINSA since January 2025.