On Sept. 13, Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted photos of the remains of an Iranian-built Shahed-136 drone its forces had shot down over the country’s eastern Kharkiv province. The incident occurred just two months after the White House disclosed that Iran was supplying “hundreds” of its domestically-built military drones to Russia and mere weeks after the first delivery of these armed drones was confirmed.
It was a striking reminder of the new rapidly unfolding reality: Middle Eastern powers are now supplying armed drones to the two warring sides in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Historically, this is a significant turnabout. After all, during the long years of the Cold War, the United States and its Western allies, on the one side, and the Soviet Union, on the other, supplied stupendous quantities of arms to warring Middle East countries. This was aptly exemplified by the frantic, simultaneous U.S. and Soviet airlifts of armaments and supplies to their regional allies, Israel on the one side and Egypt and Syria on the other, during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
Now, as Europe endures its most dangerous and destructive conflict since the end of the Second World War, it is rival Middle East powers that are actively arming both sides.
Turkey began supplying Ukraine with its well-known Bayraktar TB2 drones before this war erupted following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. There were also discussions before Feb. 24 to build a factory for locally manufacturing Turkish drones on Ukrainian soil. Russia’s invasion has failed to force Ankara and Kyiv to abandon these plans. In retrospect, it may well have unwittingly proven to have sped them up