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Iran’s dispatch of hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, bolstering Moscow’s relentless bombardment of Ukraine, has put the United States and its Western allies in a bind.
On the one hand, Washington is tempted to make Tehran pay a high price for ignoring the administration’s repeated warnings not to ship the missiles.
On the other hand, the U.S. needs Iranian cooperation to keep the lid on the Middle East and prevent the war in Gaza exploding into a full-scale regional conflict.
How to balance those two very different objectives in two very different wars?
The immediate Western reaction – a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran this week – was, in effect, the diplomatic equivalent of a motor-muscle response. What matters now is what comes next.
It is too early to gauge just how the Western allies, and Iran itself, will handle their diplomatic tug-of-war in the days ahead. But the tussle may clear the way for a decision that Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has been demanding for months: Washington appears to be drawing closer to allowing Ukraine to aim U.S. and British long-range missiles deep into Russian territory, which it has so far been forbidden to do.
In the Middle East, Washington’s goal has long been to dissuade Iran, and the Iranian-armed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, from actions that could widen the war in Gaza.
In Ukraine, it has been to arm Kyiv against Russia’s invasion – but without risking the kind of further Russian escalation that could draw NATO countries directly into the conflict.
The allies hope that Iran still wants to avoid a regional Mideast war.
It has powerful motives for that: to spare huge damage to its struggling economy and avoid further popular disaffection toward the ruling clerics, among other things.
But in Ukraine, Iran appears to have made a different risk-benefit calculation.
And that’s why Washington and its allies now seem readier to send a stronger message.
The Iranian arms shipment – 250 mobile, truck-mounted Fath-360 ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 120 miles – was the latest sign of an increasingly close military partnership with Moscow. Iran has already provided Russia with Shahed attack drones, and helped set up facilities for the Russians to manufacture them.
For its part, Iran stands to receive high-end Russian air defense systems, as well as help on its nuclear program.
The new U.S. and European sanctions are unlikely to make little immediate difference to Tehran.
Still, the way the sanctions announcements were framed – all but eliminating the prospect of international reengagement or sanctions relief – will have driven home the longer-term cost Iran could pay.
European governments have long been seen as more amenable than Washington to improved relations with Iran. But Britain, France, and Germany said they imposed their sanctions because they see the missile shipment as “Iranian missiles reaching European soil” in a “direct security threat to Europe,” in the words of their joint announcement.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting London this week before accompanying British Foreign Secretary David Lammy to Kyiv, expanded on that message.
“Iran’s new president and foreign minister have repeatedly said that they want to restore engagement with Europe,” he said. “They want to receive sanctions relief. Destabilizing actions like these will achieve exactly the opposite.”
Whether this has any impact will become clear only in the weeks ahead, as Western governments look to see whether Iran makes further missile deliveries to Russia.
But a more immediate effect could well be felt in Ukraine itself.
A number of European NATO members, especially those nearest to Russia, have long wanted the Biden administration to lift the restriction on Ukraine’s use of the long-range Western missiles that they have been given.
They reason that Kyiv should be able to target the launch bases and airfields from which Russia launches its bomber planes and missiles, such as the Iranian Fath-360s, which are currently out of Ukrainian range.
They are also concerned that the Iranian weapons – far more reliable and accurate than the munitions Russia has received from North Korea – will free Moscow to use its own longer-range missiles for intensified strikes across Ukraine.
That is a message Mr. Blinken is carrying back to Washington ahead of talks this Friday between Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, and President Joe Biden.
If Mr. Biden does now decide to ease the restrictions, it may be that Iran’s arms shipment will turn out to have done its ally more harm than good.
