President Trump’s back-to-back meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday reflected a strategic reality Washington has been slow to acknowledge.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East share operational, financial and strategic connections. Recognizing those links changes how the United States should approach both conflicts and American alliances.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine depends heavily on Iran. Since 2022, Moscow has relied on thousands of Iranian-designed Shahed drones and short-range ballistic missiles to attack Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

Drone alliance

Ukrainian intelligence identified IRGC officers in occupied Crimea assisting Russian drone operations, while Tehran helped Moscow establish a Shahed production facility in Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, allowing domestic ­production of Iranian-designed drones.

China underwrites that partnership by purchasing roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports and supplying dual-use technologies essential to Iranian missile and drone production. Three conflicts increasingly resemble different fronts sustained by the same strategic network.

Ukraine has responded accordingly. Kyiv has targeted Iranian cargo vessels and logistics routes transporting drones and military equipment to Russia, disrupting the same supply chain that threatens Israel and America’s Arab partners. Every successful strike reduces Russian battlefield capacity while exposing the network connecting Moscow, Tehran and Beijing.

Ukraine also has evolved into a source of military innovation. In March 2026, Kyiv signed a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia and Gulf partners to share battlefield experience countering Iranian drones, acknowledging that the same weapons striking Ukrainian cities threaten Gulf infrastructure and Israel.

Israel’s campaign and Ukraine’s war pursue different objectives. Israel seeks to dismantle Iran’s regional military infrastructure and restore deterrence. Ukraine seeks to defend its sovereignty and impose costs on Russian aggression.

American interests, however, converge across both theaters.

Each campaign weakens a different pillar of the Russia-Iran-China axis while reducing the resources, partnerships and strategic confidence available to America’s principal adversaries.

Resisting terror

Zelensky captured that convergence: “Now into the fifth year, Ukrainians are resisting the same kind of terrorist attacks — ballistic missiles and drones — that the Iranian regime is currently carrying out in the Middle East and the Gulf region.”

Those developments require a broader strategic outlook. NATO’s traditional focus on Russia’s eastern front has obscured a second challenge along the southern flank.

Russian forces operating across Syria, Libya and the Sahel sustain Iranian influence, protect logistics routes, and expand the reach of the Russia-Iran-China partnership. Pressure against Russian and Iranian networks in the Middle East and Africa directly reduces Moscow’s capacity to sustain the war in Ukraine.

Trump’s meetings with Netanyahu and Zelensky acknowledged that reality.

His decision to condition a US-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement on Saudi normalization with Israel reinforced the same logic.

Washington should capitalize on that momentum by strengthening cooperation among the Abraham Accords countries, expanding coordination with Ukraine on missile defense, drones and battlefield innovation, and increasing pressure on the Russia-Iran-China partnership through sanctions on Chinese firms that sustained Iran’s military effort during Operation Epic Fury.

Competition with China in the Indo-Pacific, Russia’s war in Europe, and instability across the Middle East are all one battle.

The US should not approach each independently, but strength our own alliances — with Europe, Israel, the Gulf states and Ukraine.

Each weakens a different component of the Russia-Iran-China axis — and makes sure the US vision of a free world prevails again.

Zineb Riboua is a research fellow at the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, Hudson Institute.