Two Iranian drones hit Azerbaijan, Iran’s northern neighbor, on Thursday, injuring four people and expanding the Iran conflict onto another front. The Azeris, who have a tense relationship with the Islamic Republic over their growing ties to NATO countries, have reportedly deployed troops to the Iranian border, which they say is out of defense. This comes after NATO shot down an Iranian missile that was headed toward Turkey – Tehran denied firing the missile. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces are reportedly readying armed units to cross from Iraq into Iran. The US and Israel want the Kurds – an ethnic group that spans Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey – to get involved, possibly to act as ground troops for their coalition. The CIA even gave small weapons to Kurdish militias ahead of this conflict. Kurdish involvement in this conflict could present a major risk: if the Kurds were to be successful in helping to topple the regime, Iran could end up getting divided along ethnic lines.
While the war with Iran escalates, Ukraine says the US is turning to Kyiv for its hard-earned expertise in countering Shahed drones, which Iran has launched more than 2,000 times since last Saturday. Mass-produced cheaply by Russia and Iran, Shaheds are so inexpensive that using sophisticated US missile defense interceptors — which can cost up to $3 million per shot, compared to $50,000 to manufacture each drone — is wildly uneconomical. They are also in short supply in Ukraine. Because of this, its army has been forced to innovate. As its supply of gold-standard interceptors, Patriot air systems, dwindles, Kyiv has developed far cheaper and more improvised countermeasures — at times as rudimentary as deploying fishing nets — to bring the drones down. Now, with US air defense resources shifting to the Middle East, Ukraine may have to rely even more heavily on those homegrown tactics. Meanwhile, Russia, which was stretched thin by sanctions and war spending, could get a revenue boost from elevated oil prices as the conflict chokes oil shipments in the Gulf.
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In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer examines what may come next in the US-Israel war with Iran as the Trump administration signals significantly larger military operations ahead.