Energy Targets In The Sights Of Two Theaters Of War

Two Different Playbooks

Ukraine’s campaign against Russian energy assets has been underway for more than a year and has steadily intensified. The Iran war, in contrast has been marked by a series of memoranda, ceasefires, and collapses, including the interim US-Iran deal signed June 17, under which Tehran agreed to dilute its enriched uranium stockpile in exchange for sanctions relief, a ceasefire U.S. President Donald Trump declared “over” on July 8 amidst reports that Iranian forces had fired on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, followed by strikes on over 140 Iranian targets, and most recently, a fresh round of negotiations over shipping routes through Hormuz that appears to be getting nowhere as Iran once again insists on control of the Strait, the payment of “reparations,” the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the area, the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and Lebanon without the disarmament of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations, and so on.

Kyiv Ratcheting up the Pressure

Ukraine’s battlefield tempo has been escalating since the diplomatic deadlock and failed truces of early 2026. Commander Robert Brovdi, the head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, claims strikes on Russia’s operation and strategic depth have grown 1,150 percent since the start of the year, with deep strikes now reaching 2,000 kilometers into the Russian heartland. The running tally of hit facilities demonstrates the targeting of Russia’s refining sector, with Saratov, Ryazan, Perm, Tyumen, Yaroslavl, Salavat, Afipsky, Syzran, Ilsky, Omsk, NORSI, Ufa, and Moscow’s Kapotnya refineries targeted, and several struck repeatedly as repairs neared competition. Ukrainian officials report the campaign has disabled roughly 40 percent of Russia’s refining capacity, and Moscow has responded by restricting fuel access in 60 out of 83 regions.

The strategy has also matured from blunt destruction into a component-level campaign. Ukrainian drone units now receive briefings from experts and engineers on precisely which equipment within a given refinery is most critical and hardest to replace, rather than simply targeting storage tanks. Once air defenses are cleared from a corridor, Brovdi says targeting becomes “a matter of pure mathematics” to maximize harm to production volumes, export flows, and points of shipment.

The pace of Ukraine’s strikes has not been tightly bound to diplomacy and has intensified in its absence. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal explicitly frames the campaign as attrition rather than costly signaling, likening it to a boxing match in which “each boxer hopes their rival will fall first.” Zelensky’s June 25^th 40-day drone surge on inland energy infrastructure and Crimean supply lines is a prominent example that mixed cognitive and hard warfare and was intended to force Putin into ceasefire peace negotiations.

The underlying dispute can be considered insoluble. Moscow demands Ukraine surrender the remainder of the Donbas while Kyiv refuses to cede land Russia has failed to capture. Uncertainty about Russia’s future intentions makes appeasement a slippery slope for Kyiv — ceding territory might only increase Moscow’s appetite and empower further attacks.

The escalation cuts both ways, with no clear diplomatic exit in sight. As Kyiv squeezes Russian refineries, Moscow has hit Ukraine’s Naftogaz facilities over 250 times since January along with approximately 250 frontline gas stations, while its ballistic missile launches doubled month over month in July. Despite optimistic readings of Ukraine’s drone campaign, its costly strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have neither shifted Putin’s posture, eroded Russia’s military advantage, nor destabilized its home front, leaving Putin’s incentive to negotiate essentially unchanged, as the costs of war, while high in blood and treasure, remain well below the political price to the Russian regime of a compromise peace with large portions of Ukraine outside of Moscow’s grasp.

Tehran’s Calibrated Squeeze

The Iran war has ebbed and flowed quite differently. Less than a month after the war began, Dr. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, reported that the war had “severely damaged” more than 40 energy facilities across nine countries. An Iranian strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex knocked out an estimated 17 percent of the country’s LNG output capacity for up to the next five years, and Israel’s initial strike on South Pars, which supplies a majority of Iran’s domestic gas, triggered immediate and calibrated Iranian retaliation across the Gulf.

Some evidence of willingness to bargain over key issues in the conflict was suggested by the June 17 memorandum of understanding, as uranium enrichment levels, sanctions relief, and Hormuz transit rights were cast as subject to phased, partial trades, different than the zero-sum territorial demands that the Kremlin has articulated concerning Ukraine.

In March, after Israeli strikes hit refineries near Tehran and the South Pars gas field, Iranian retaliatory strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure peaked and then dropped off after Washington announced the commencement of negotiations. The pattern repeated early this month, with Trump canceling a planned large-scale attack on Iranian targets, reportedly after Tehran and regional governments requested restraint from Washington in the midst of an upcoming diplomatic breakthrough, although weapon shortages may also have been a factor. In both cases, active strike campaigns served as costly signals of intent and resilience, intended to improve bargaining positions, and petered out during negotiations.

Even the current cycle of threats and de-escalations is transactional, as Trump has time and again drawn false red lines, threatening civilization-leveling strikes as leverage in negotiations before recanting and declaring an imminent deal. This is a pattern Iran’s chief negotiator, Speaker of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has mocked as “theater diplomacy on loop.” Analysts warn that successive bouts of bluster are eroding threat credibility and increasing ambiguity. Nevertheless, these strike campaigns are also less disruptive than the attrition strikes seen in Ukraine, as the U.S. goal remains to reach agreement rather than force the other party to its knees. As for Iran, the recent ascendancy of IRGC veteran generals to top command positions suggests an ongoing commitment to broad regional hostilities.

Next Steps

Strikes that keep pace with negotiations, escalating to overcome impasses and easing as talks progress, signal a real, if narrow, zone of possible agreement. On the other hand, strikes that escalate in the absence of diplomacy, hitting assets that directly affect civilian resilience and the functioning of the war machine, signal exhaustion is the goal, not merely an improved bargaining position.

Moscow’s choice hinges on whether the serious reduction of oil refining capacity and exports of oil, high death tolls, and the disruption of Russian domestic supply chains become politically unbearable. It appears that so far the answer is no, since the Kremlin has ruled out returning to the negotiating table for now.

For the U.S., bargaining-based strikes targeting Iranian military, mark the war currently. If negotiations continue to falter over time, Iran may resume and expand its focus on the Gulf countries’ oil and natural gas infrastructure and beyond. Yet, as the military power discrepancy between Washington and Tehran is pronounced, the ability of the U.S. and its allies to neutralize the Iranian oil and gas production and transportation remains a trump card the U.S would play reluctantly because of the impact on global oil prices.