The Iran and Ukraine wars are becoming more intertwined with every passing week – to the point that some analysts argue the two conflicts are beginning to merge.

Quite how each war will affect the trajectory of the other is hard to predict, but it is already clear that their interconnectedness is drawing more countries into both cauldrons, extending an arc of instability that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

From Ukraine’s point of view, the connection is nothing new. Russia began using Iranian-made Shahed drones in September 2022, seven months into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. What is new is Moscow’s return of the favour to Tehran, with a reported flow of intelligence, targeting and drones to Iran after the US-Israeli assault on 28 February.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tour of the Middle East over the past few weeks has cemented another cross-regional link between the two conflicts, sealing agreements to provide drone and anti-drone technology and training to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, while initiating security talks along similar lines with Jordan.

The two wars are also converging through global energy markets. The initial impact of the attack on Iran, along with Tehran’s response in closing down Gulf shipping through the strait of Hormuz, favoured Russia through a spike in oil and gas prices.

For Moscow, the increase in demand has provided an economic lifeline just as its economy was coming under growing strain, prompting the government to drop plans for budget cuts.

To stabilise the market, the Trump administration has eased some restrictions on Russian oil exports that were intended to pressure the Kremlin over its war in Ukraine. Furthermore, Asian countries, particularly those hit by the closure of the strait of Hormuz – including Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka – are now lining up to buy Russian oil.

In an effort to limit Russia’s windfall, Ukraine has in recent days intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. A Reuters estimate last week said up to 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity had been halted after mass Ukrainian drone attacks.

The conflicts have become so interlocked that what happens in one theatre of war now has a tangible impact on the other – a fact emphasised by European states, anxious to avoid being sucked into a spiralling Middle East conflagration. The UK defence secretary, John Healey, pointed to Putin’s “hidden hand” behind Iran’s drone tactics.

“These wars are very much interlinked,” said the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. “So if America wants the war in the Middle East to stop – Iran to stop attacking them – they should also put the pressure on Russia so that they are not able to help them.”

The Trump administration has been reluctant to acknowledge the linkage, maintaining preferential treatment of Moscow, easing sanctions, allowing a Russian shipment of oil to break the US blockade on Cuba even as ever stronger evidence emerged of Russian assistance to Iran in the midst of the war.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, insisted Russia’s role in Iran was not “impeding or affecting” US operations. “The Americans don’t want to interlink the two wars and punish Russia,” said Hanna Notte, the director for Eurasia at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.

There are signs that the US is putting more pressure on Kyiv for its attacks on Russian oil facilities, keeping the oil price high, than on Moscow for supplying lethal weaponry to Iran to fire at US and allied targets. The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Trump had threatened to cut off weapon supplies to Ukraine if European allies did not help reopen the Hormuz strait.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received “signals” from partners urging it to scale back strikes on Russian energy facilities. He insisted that the strikes would continue as long as Russian attacks targeted Ukraine’s own energy infrastructure.

Russia’s deepening involvement in Iran’s defence, however, will put new pressure on Trump’s pro-Russian inclinations. For the Kremlin, support to Iran offers a chance to rebuild its geopolitical standing after a series of setbacks.

Dragged down by its war in Ukraine, the Kremlin was forced to stand largely on the sidelines as key allies fell – including the toppled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, who was captured in a US operation and removed from power

“Once it became clear that the US was struggling to convert military superiority into political gains, Russia saw an opportunity to expose American weakness,” Notte said. “It is in their interests to give the Americans a bloody nose and prolong the war.”

Zelenskyy has alleged that Moscow provided Iran with intelligence based on satellite imagery in the run-up to an Iranian drone and missile strike on US planes and personnel at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia on Friday, injuring 12 Americans.

Russia is also suspected of sending drones, perhaps including Gerans, Moscow’s own update on the Shahed, in road shipments disguised as humanitarian convoys.

Ukraine’s bloodily earned experience of Shaheds and Gerans made Zelenskyy a sought-after guest in Gulf capitals. He has seized the opening, offering to export low-cost, battlefield-tested technologies to help address local shortages of weapons, while showcasing a new global role for Ukraine: no longer just a recipient of aid, but a supplier.

Kyiv is not just selling interceptors, but also software, electronic warfare systems and maritime drones. “We are taking a systemic approach to this,” Zelenskyy said.

Orysia Lutsevych, the head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House thinktank, said Ukraine’s new security network in the Gulf gives the country more clout with Washington – a riposte to Trump’s repeated jibe that Kyiv has “no cards” in its battle with Russia.

“Ukraine is trying to show that our cards are about being a very robust, agile, fast-adapting and producing economy that can both defend against Russia and also defend other countries through weapons system sales,” Lutsevych said.

She added that the security relationships cultivated in the Gulf could provide a vital alternative source of desperately needed finance for Ukraine’s arms industry, at a time when EU funds have been blocked by Hungary.

“Ukraine has production capabilities but not enough investment. It can produce more, but it doesn’t have enough orders or capital,” Lutsevych said. “So this actually comes as a great opportunity to use these production facilities.”

The interconnected regional conflicts are still some way off from becoming a world war, argued William Spaniel, an associate political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh, “but it is further connecting the battlefield outcomes, and it will have longer lasting implications for how the battle lines are divided”.

Fiona Hill, a former Russia adviser in the first Trump administration, argued that if modern forms of warfare such as cyber, hybrid and other grey zone operations are taken into account, a world war has been under way for some time and has been brought closer to a boil by the Iran war.

“I think it meets that threshold for a system-changing war,” Hill, now at the Brookings Institution, said. “There’ll be all kinds of new configurations of countries that will have sprung up.”

She pointed to the unpredictable impact on global stability of oil and fertiliser shortages, giving a wide array of other states motives to become involved in the Middle East, and the question of whether China would take advantage of Washington’s distraction to take action against Taiwan.

“We’ve got a ‘four horses of the apocalypse’ going here … and I just feel that people are sleepwalking into it.”