For the first time since the war began, targets belonging to the Iranian Navy were struck by the IDF Wednesday evening in the port city of Bandar Anzali, on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran.
The IDF said that "the Air Force, guided by the Navy and Military Intelligence, struck targets in northern Iran for the first time in Operation Rising Lion," and Israeli officials confirmed that the strikes targeted Iranian Navy vessels in the port. The unusual attack expanded the war's maritime arena beyond the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, reaching the Caspian Sea for the first time.
Bandar Anzali is home to the main base of the Iranian Navy's northern fleet, and the port plays a central role in the maritime trade route between Iran and Russia. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Caspian has become a key smuggling corridor: Iranian and Russian ships have routinely switched off their tracking systems and transferred cargo between the Iranian ports of Anzali and Amirabad and the Russian port of Astrakhan. Tehran has used the route to send Moscow drones, missiles, bullets and mortar shells for use against Ukraine.
That is how the Caspian Sea, which ostensibly has no connection to the combat zones, became a vital supply artery that helped feed the Russian war machine throughout the four years of war in Ukraine.
Ukraine itself has struck in the area several times in an effort to disrupt the Iran-Russia route. In November 2024, it attacked targets in the Caspian Sea for the first time, when drones hit the Russian port of Kaspiysk in the Dagestan region, home to the Russian Caspian Flotilla, reportedly damaging two missile ships.
In August 2025, Ukrainian forces attacked a Russian cargo ship in the area that was carrying equipment and ammunition from Iran, including drone components, causing it to partially sink.
Military cooperation between Russia and Iran shifted into high gear after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Moscow bought Shahed drones from Tehran, and they became one of its main tools in attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Now, with the outbreak of the current war, the route is also operating in reverse.
According to reports, Russia is supplying Iran with the Geran-2, the upgraded Russian version of the Shahed, equipped with improved communications, navigation and targeting systems developed on the basis of Russia's experience in the war in Ukraine, as well as intelligence on the locations of US forces in the region.
