Iran is currently getting a reprieve from nightly bombing strikes by the American armed forces. Which means it is DEFINITELY the perfect time to start something with… Ukraine?

Yes, you are reading that right. Iran is blaming Ukraine for an attack on an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, which is in Iran’s north, but doesn’t touch Ukraine. It does, however, touch Russia – and Ukraine was apparently aiming for cargo shipments going from Iran to Russia.

Iran said the attack left one sailor dead and injured several others. The country’s foreign ministry complained to Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in Tehran early on Sunday and “conveyed Iran’s strong protest over the ‘hostile and criminal act.’” Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

In a post on X highlighting Ukraine’s attacks on distant Russian targets, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that his country’s forces “also achieved very strong results with long‑range strikes in the Caspian Sea – including vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran, as well as a warship.”

Russia has long used Iranian-designed Shahed drones in its war on Ukraine, a weapon that analysts sometimes refer to as “the poor man’s cruise missile.”

But the latest attacks by Ukraine, combined with Saudi military strikes on Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen following the rebel group’s attacks on Red Sea shipping in recent days, represent a widening of the Middle East conflict.

Currently, the United States, at President Trump’s direction, is on a break from striking targets in Iran at the moment, after thirteen straight nights of hits in and around the Strait of Hormuz. A story from the New York Times is reporting that the supply of defensive weapons in the Middle East may be the reason why a hold has been called.

President Trump has set aside, at least for now, plans to sharply escalate the American military assault against Iran, with particular concern that intensifying the war could dangerously drain the Pentagon’s already diminished stockpile of Patriot antimissile interceptors and other air defense munitions in the Middle East.

The threat to interceptor stockpiles is one of many considerations that have made a return to major combat operations a hugely risky endeavor, administration officials say. Mr. Trump and his top aides are also uneasy about the prospect of a widening war in the Middle East, the alienation of key Gulf allies who are vulnerable to Iranian attack, a global economic crunch, and growing energy and refugee crises.

The latest turn in Mr. Trump’s handling of the conflict with Iran came after a meeting on Friday with top advisers and senior members of his cabinet, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

First off, who is leaking this to the New York Times? Second, if the defensive missiles are depleted, then maybe we should just hurry up and finish the job already, as Senator John Kennedy has said he told the president.

Kennedy said the US should act quickly to accomplish its war goals as the conflict approaches its sixth month, warning the president that previous daily attacks on Iran are just not working.

“The president likes the daily attacks. He believes that sometimes you have to kill a few chickens to scare the monkeys,” Kennedy told CBS News’ “Meet the Press,” referencing the old Chinese idiom.

“I don’t think that’s going to work with the Iranian leadership,” he added. “These people are more than mildly insane. It’s like dealing with Son of Sam or Charles Manson.”

But the end of the “memorandum of understanding” and the resumption of airstrikes has, according to sources in Iran, created a split between the “elected” civilian officials and the IRGC, who most likely have control of whatever is left of Mojtaba Khamenei.

Iran’s leaders are fighting each other almost as much as they’re battling the West, with some senior politicians scrambling to save US talks while the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leans into the renewed war, regional sources told The Post.

With Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei out of public view, there’s no one left to force the rival factions back into line — meaning the future of the conflict may now be decided by a power struggle in Tehran, not by Washington.

The growing divide has exposed what the sources describe as two competing centers of power inside Tehran: civilian leaders trying to preserve a fragile diplomatic track and military hardliners determined to keep up pressure through confrontation.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf want to keep dialogue with the US alive and prevent the fighting from spiraling into another full-scale regional war, the sources said.

But their authority has steadily eroded, one regional source familiar with Iran’s internal dynamics told The Post.

“They can sign [agreements], but they can’t stop the IRGC from acting or parliament from legislating around them,” the person said.

Instead of winning internal political battles, the IRGC has increasingly created “facts on the ground” through military action, the source said, while hardline lawmakers move afterward to enshrine those actions into law.

This is essentially why the MOU ended up collapsing – the civilian leaders would plead for a deal with President Trump, and then made deals that the IRGC had no intention of honoring. And with Mojtaba missing in action, whoever has control of his X account is the one “speaking” for him. And that is probably the IRGC.

Today, as the nations of the world have grown weary of the tyranny and oppression of the US government and the criminal Zionists, who are the destroyers of lives and generations, there remains no path forward except jihad and resistance.

— Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (@MKhamenei_ir) July 26, 2026

Well, that makes things easier, doesn’t it? The West needs to stop treating Pezeshkian, Araghchi, and Ghalibaf like they have any authority to make Iran cooperate or follow through with agreements. The man in charge is IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi, and whatever is coming from Mojtaba’s X account probably came straight from his mouth first.

So you would think that Iran would play this attack by Ukraine smartly, and not pick a new fight. Yeah, that’s not how the IRGC or the hardliners think.

Any attack on Iran always comes with a cost, and that remains true today; the U.S. and Israel are well aware of this.

Ukraine, too, may soon come to understand that Iran does not let actions go unanswered.

The list of those who have miscalculated continues to increase!

— ابراهیم عزیزی (@Ebrahimazizi33) July 26, 2026

“Any attack on Iran always comes with a cost, and that remains true today. The U.S. and Israel are well aware of this,” Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Commission, said in a post on X.

“Ukraine, too, may soon come to understand that Iran does not let actions go unanswered,” he added, warning that the list of those “who have miscalculated continues to increase.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the attack and said earlier Sunday that the incident “cannot go unanswered.”

If Iran decides to escalate by attacking Ukraine, Europe as a whole might have a mental breakdown. They don’t want Iran to go nuclear, but they don’t like President Trump taking action to make sure that doesn’t happen. If Ukraine becomes an Iranian target, what will Europe do? They have supported Ukraine ever since the invasion in 2022 – will they now back off, or will they accept this escalation? It’s a fair and open question, and one Europe would probably like to avoid.

Featured image via jorono on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license