BEYOND Nato’s reach, Iran and Russia are forging a new terrifying axis in a landlocked waterway.
With its southern ports severed by Donald Trump‘s blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is turning north to a “war zone” shipping artery rocked by airstrikes and a naval arms race for survival.
The Caspian Sea, a key maritime corridor sitting between Iran and Russia, is both keeping the mullah regime alive and helping Putin launch strikes on Ukraine.
Bordering just five countries, it is the only large-scale transport route linking Moscow and Tehran that bypasses US intervention – due to a ban on foreign military deployments inside it.
International security expert Luke Coffey told the Sun: “The Iranians have been using the Caspian Sea as a way to trade more with Russia and receive assistance… but also to provide energy exports to circumvent international sanctions.
“Munitions, artillery shells, spare parts – these are items that have been sent north to Russia.”
Security analyst Dakota Irvin said the waterway had become a “key lifeline” for the regime.
He told The Sun: “Russia is reportedly sending technology and weapons to Iran, and Iran has also helped Russia with drones and ballistic missiles… it’s really kind of a key lifeline.”
Putin is exploiting the waterway to fuel his war in Ukraine.
To the chokepoint’s northwest lies the Volga-Don canal – a shipping route connecting the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Azov.
Russian vessels carrying military equipment have used the narrow stretch to get arms closer to the Black Sea on Ukraine’s south coast.
The Caspian, which also borders Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, has allowed Iran to trade key imports and exports such as food, essential supplies and oil.
Before the outbreak of war on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz handled 80 per cent of all Iranian trade.
But as of today, the US has achieved a near-total blockade of the regime’s southern ports.
More than 30 per cent of Iran’s imports now transit through the Caspian Sea, according to Tehran.
Coffey said: “They’ve been doing this a lot in recent weeks. What is new is the rate at which they are doing it.”
Increased trade in the Caspian Sea helps both regimes “resupply, rearm, and trade energy” as part of a larger effort to undermine the interests of the West, he added.
Irvin said: “The war isolated Iran from the rest of the world, and Russia is its only remaining key ally.
“The Caspian has emerged as this gateway for them as a back door for illicit trade including weapons and drones.”
Aside from food items like sunflower oil or animal feed, reports say Russia is also sending drone components and explosives to Iran through the sea.
The Kremlin has been helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles “in one of the most significant known transfers of strategic military technology from Moscow to Tehran,” the Financial Times reported.
The relationship goes both ways – with Iran reportedly giving Putin drone and missile parts for his war in Ukraine to strike civilians and frontline targets.
Tehran’s imports and exports have not only been suffocated through their southern ports – but also their land and air routes.
Huge queues have been reported near Iran’s borders while cargo flights have been delayed as the US does everything it can to pile pressure on the regime’s neighbours.
Waiting times for trucks to cross the border between the town of Gürbulak in Turkey and Iran have increased fourfold compared to before the war, transport authorities say.
These factors have all pushed Tehran into a corner, with the regime relying on the Caspian Sea, the world’s biggest inland body of water, to keep itself afloat.
Despite a ban on foreign military presences in the Caspian, Ukraine has taken measures into its own hands to slow the flow of Iranian drones destined for the frontline.
In August, Ukraine confirmed it had struck and sunk a ship transporting Moscow-bound Shahed drone components.
Following the blitz – the first direct link between the wars in Iran and Ukraine – Tehran threatened to hit back.
The declarations sparked fears of World War Three as the regime vowed revenge.
Ukraine has also been hit by cruise missiles launched by Russian warships from the Caspian Sea.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has struck Russian off-shore oil fields and dozens of Putin’s warships in the waterway.
Strikes on Tehran’s ships in the maritime flashpoint were also launched by Tel Aviv just weeks after the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
“The balance of naval power in the Caspian, it is definitely shifting because of what Ukraine, but also what Israel has done to the Russian and the Iranian fleets respectively,” Coffey added.
“Israel and Ukraine have expanded these two separate wars into one sort of conjoined conflict meeting in the Caspian Sea.”
Irvin said this increasing activity showed the waterway was becoming a “zone of war”.
“The Caspian is now almost a zone of war, which is complicating some of the shipping networks between Russia and Iran,” he said.
To ensure frictionless trade between both regimes amid the threat of strikes, Moscow and Tehran have been repeatedly turning off automatic identification system (AIS) signals according to maritime data, a method known as “dark activity”.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/17091952/waterway-arms-putin-iran-terror-axis-beyond-nato-reach/