WEBVTT

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A long range Ukrainian attack drone slammed into an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea,

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a clear sign that the war in Ukraine

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is now colliding with the war in Iran.

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This matters because the Caspian has slowly

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become this kind of weapons superhighway connecting

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Russia's war in Europe with the war in Iran and the Middle East.

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Ukraine is now trying to cut that artery before more munitions move through it.

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Today we'll uncover exactly what weapons are moving through here,

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how Ukraine managed to.

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and why the next strikes here

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could expand both wars affecting Ukrainian cities,

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Gulf states,

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and American forces in the region.

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I'm your average infantryman Chris Cappy.

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Hit the like button to get 3 military rundowns each week.

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Ukraine's President Zelensky says that the ship was evading

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sanctions by transporting military cargo between Russia and Iran.

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This includes components for killer attack drones and ballistic missiles.

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The explosion killed 1 Iranian.

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A sailor wounded another.

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So in a rare display of international cooperation,

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Iran and Russia have successfully turned two separate wars into one.

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Iran's foreign minister

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condemned the attack as a hostile and criminal act.

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They summoned Ukraine's top diplomat in Tehran

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and warned that it cannot go unanswered.

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Iranian media went even further,

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openly discussing ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine.

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Zelensky's response was that Iran.

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Has already long been in this war by supplying Russia.

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He then stated that his country had proof that

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Russian satellites had been surveying American bases in the Gulf

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and then passing that intelligence to Iran.

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The Caspian Sea was previously a kind

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of protected back corridor between sanctioned regimes.

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It was a landlocked sea where no Western forces could really interdict or reach.

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Ukraine is now hunting the supply chain

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that attacks their city.

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By hitting the ships that are carrying the

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components before they even reach their destination.

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And so,

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Ukraine and Israel have begun striking at the corridor itself,

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because this has been slowly escalating in the background of these wars,

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where it's now reaching a boiling point.

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In November 2024,

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Ukrainian drones hit the Russian port in Dagestan,

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reportedly damaging two missile ships.

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Then it escalated again in April 2026,

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when Ukrainian forces struck two offshore drilling platforms

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in the northern Caspian Sea.

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They targeted facilities that are vital links in supplying fuel.

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To the Russian occupation army,

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Israeli fighter jets then attacked Iran's

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Caspian port infrastructure in March 2026,

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disabling all these naval assets in Bandar and Zel.

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The attacks severely disrupted the logistics

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corridor linking Russian ports to Iran.

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It forced both countries onto riskier overland

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alternatives like through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

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Russia and Iran might have to now invest heavily in a multi-layered air.

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The system that covers the Caspian Sea.

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They're going to have to pull air assets off the

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front line and move it to protect this critical waterway.

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There's a reason why there are so many strikes here,

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I think.

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It's incredibly important to Russia and Iran's war efforts.

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These strikes show that the corridor is becoming a center of

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gravity in this expanding war that is now linking two continents,

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Europe and Asia.

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What we're seeing here is the two countries

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most harmed by the Russian-Iran partnership

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are prepared to reach deep into once protected space.

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The war in Ukraine and the war in Iran

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are parts of an emerging Eurasian conflict system,

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which

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sounds a little bit like extra words for World War II.

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The way this happened is the Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water.

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It sits on the border of Europe and Asia,

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and it's larger in surface area than the entire country of Japan,

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yet it has no connection to any ocean.

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So it's often classified as both a sea and a lake,

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because apparently even geography here refuses to take a clear position,

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but it's bordered by Russia,

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Kazakhstan,

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Turkmenistan,

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Azerbaijan,

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and Iran.

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So the Caspian Sea

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is known for its oil reserves,

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fishing,

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and its position as this kind of transit

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point between the continents of Europe and Asia.

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For most of modern history,

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the Caspian Sea was a place of regional commerce,

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and occasional border disputes.

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That changed when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

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Of Ukraine.

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Since that moment,

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the Caspian has been transformed into one of the

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most consequential bodies of water on the entire Earth.

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And one of the big problems here is that the Caspian Sea has

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been just a big geopolitical blind spot for the US State Department.

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There's no big CIA station desk on the Caspian Sea.

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It's been irrelevant until now.

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Both Russia and Iran are heavily sanctioned

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states cut off from Western financial systems.

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These two countries are cut off from the global supply.

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Chains and shipping routes that they would normally use.

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The Caspian Sea has since served as a

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key corridor between the two sanctioned allies.

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Once Russian military cargo reaches Iran,

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it moves by rail or road toward the Persian Gulf

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and then attacks Hormuz.

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What travels along it has ranged from sanctioned

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oil and industrial goods to drone components,

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missiles,

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and ammunition.

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It's become a very active weapons pipeline,

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so Russia's entire drone industry is largely thanks to.

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The Caspian Sea.

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When Russia first established their long range drone attack program,

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it was with the help of Iran's advisors,

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and according to a C4AD and US Treasury research report,

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beginning in late 2022,

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Iran provided Russia's Alabuga manufacturing facility with the

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Shahad 136 blueprints and the source code.

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The production equipment and technical training to

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mass produce them was also supplied,

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and disassembled drone kits,

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engines,

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electronics,

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all the components needed.

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Iranian specialists gave them access

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to their drone facilities,

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and all of it was moved across this waterway in the Caspian.

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The plan was to move from assembling Iranian kits

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to manufacturing roughly 90% of the Russian-made ones domestically,

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and their initial target was for 6000 attack drones per year.

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Some equipment reportedly traveled in 50

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shipping containers across the Caspian Sea,

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and that's how it got there.

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So Russia later localized and modified the design substantially

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in return.

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Russia has given Iran the missing piece that they need

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by upgrading their Shahd drones that use satellite navigation now,

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so it's a two-way street.

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The Wall Street Journal got access to weapons contracts that

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showed the details of Iran's Defense Ministry and Russia's shipping artillery

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shells across the Caspian Sea.

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For over 3 years now,

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Iran has shipped more than 300,000 artillery shells to Russia

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for use against Ukraine through this waterway.

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Iran has little use for artillery shells right now.

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So it's easy for them to make that trade,

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and it didn't stop there.

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Russia used Caspian-based warships to fire their

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cruise missiles directly at targets in Ukraine.

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So Putin actually fired missiles from here against Syria too,

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which is really weird to think about firing missiles at both Syria and Ukraine

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from the same sea.

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But that kind of illustrates

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these two places that seem far apart are connected by this waterway

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by proximity.

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The Caspian Sea

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is an active launch platform against Ukrainian.

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Civilian and military infrastructure

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and it extends the reach of the Caspian flotilla into the heart of the conflict.

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Very recently,

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Ukraine really had no recourse,

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and they were unable to fire long range drones to accurately hit here.

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But with the emergence of their long range strike program,

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that calculation has quickly changed.

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The Caspian Sea has become a frontline concern in two simultaneous wars Russia's

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invasion of Ukraine and a broader conflict involving Iran and the Middle East.

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It's where these wars.

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Are colliding and meshing together

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and all those times that you hear about people say wars are spilling

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over or there's risk of local war turning into a regional one,

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this is what they're talking about.

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And part of the reason for this has to do with the legality of here.

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So legally,

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according to the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea,

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signed by all five bordering nations,

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it prohibits the deployment of any kind of armed

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forces from any third party country within its waters,

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so moving weapons and supplies.

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Across international waters is much easier than getting them through land,

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for instance.

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Normally you'd have to ask permission from everyone from Azerbaijan,

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Turkmenistan,

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and say,

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hey,

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is it cool if we transport weapons to your territory?

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Classic Civilization 5 stuff.

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But Iran and Russia don't need to get permissions from any countries.

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They can just move their weapons through these open waters because it's,

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it's like an anything goes for weapons logistics.

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It's a free for all.

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And so it's this combination of geography,

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legality,

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and the shared desperation of two heavily.

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Sanctioned states that has transformed the Caspian into a strategic artery.

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Russia and Iran,

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both cut off from Western financial systems and global supply chains,

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have turned to each other across this inland sea

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to sustain their respective war efforts.

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The Caspian Sea is the centerpiece of a wider Eurasian

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economic realignment driven by the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

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The sea hosts major oil and gas fields and critical ports

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that connect Central Asia to global markets.

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It's estimated to hold the world's largest reservoir of oil and natural gas

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after the Persian Gulf and Russia itself.

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Right here,

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largest supply of oil,

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I'm not sure how the Pentagon hasn't heard of this place yet,

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but China views the Caspian Sea

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as a key corridor for energy supplies and its Belt and Road Initiative,

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which is basically an economic strategy that uses infrastructure.

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And connectivity

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to expand Beijing's influence.

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If the risk and liability to doing business here increases from these wars,

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it's going to put a major thorn

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in the side of Xi Jinping

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because it links mainland China to Europe.

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The result is that the sea is simultaneously

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a weapons corridor for two sanctioned powers.

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And this major artery

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running directly through this space is

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the International North-South Transport Corridor,

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or the INSTC.

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It's a 7200 kilometer long multi-modal network of,

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of ships,

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rails,

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and road routes connecting Russia to Iran and onward to India and the Indian Ocean.

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Originally signed in 2000 through an agreement between Iran,

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Russia,

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and India.

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The project then faced two decades of delays

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due to sanctions and lack of investment.

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The war in Ukraine though has changed that.

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After 20 years of delays,

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the project finally found its purpose,

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helping two sanctioned governments avoid the people who sanctioned them.

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Suddenly isolated from Western markets,

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Moscow prioritized the corridor as a kind of strategic lifeline,

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and Tehran,

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equally isolated,

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embraced it as a route to economic survival.

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In 2025,

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cargo flows along the north-south corridor here exceeded 8 million tons

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for the first nine months alone.

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The container traffic nearly doubled along some branches.

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For both countries,

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the INSTC

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is a sanction-proof architecture.

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It's,

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it's designed to outlast Western economic pressure.

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Since the invasion of Ukraine,

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the Caspian has also functioned as a refuge for Russian naval assets.

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That were displaced from the Black Sea where they were crushed there.

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The Black Sea fleet increasingly under threat from Ukrainian drones and missiles,

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so elements of Russia's naval force have

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redeployed away from the contested Black Sea toward

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the Caspian through inland waterways.

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So the Caspian Sea is not naturally connected to the Black Sea,

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but they're linked by human-made waterways like the

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Volgaon Canal and the unified Deep Water System.

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So the mechanics of this weapons pipeline

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have been deliberately obscured,

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but intelligence groups report on vessels from Russia's

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so-called shadow fleet that's operating along the corridor

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under Iranian and Russian flags.

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They're linked to the smuggling of sanctioned oil,

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drone components,

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and military cargo.

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Many of these vessels routinely switch off their tracking signals,

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making it difficult to monitor what they're carrying.

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Exactly where they're going.

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In 2024,

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the United States sanctioned two Russian shipping companies

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that were transporting drone-related attack equipment

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and munitions across the Caspian Sea

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that were being used in the war in Ukraine.

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However,

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Ukraine has not been passive in their response.

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The Ukrainian military announced that it had sunk a vessel at the port of Olia

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that's said to be transporting components for the Shahad drones from Iran.

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They describe it as a port that's a hub

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for importing military supplies and aiding Moscow's war effort.

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Actions like these only reinforce the idea that the Caspian

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corridor carries far more military equipment than previously assessed.

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The flow of military technology has

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since reversed direction with significant consequences.

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Russia is now shipping drone components back to Iran via the Caspian.

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Helping Iran rebuild its offensive capabilities

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after losing an estimated 60 to 80% of their drone arsenal during recent fighting,

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the components originate in Tardestan,

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where Russian manufactures its own version of the Shahad,

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and from there the cargo travels by river barge

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down the Volga

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and then across the Caspian

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through roughly 700 kilometers of open water

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that remains entirely beyond most Western interdiction.

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Ukraine's attacks on Iranian ships

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shows another level of cooperation between America and Ukraine.

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American officials requested Ukraine's help in

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defending against Iranian drone attacks,

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and President Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine would

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send military experts to the Gulf.

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Region

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with requests coming from 11 countries

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to help them with defending against those drones,

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and the logic is that the drones that

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Ukraine has spent years learning to intercept over Kyiv

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are the same weapons now being fired at Gulf states and American military assets.

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Ukrainian expertise that was hard won over thousands of

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drone intercepts and years on the front line.

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And all of their adaptations

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has become some of the most operationally relevant knowledge available

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to US war planners in the Middle Eastern theater.

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So Ukraine's involvement in the Iran conflict

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is a direct consequence of the Caspian corridor

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and the weapons loop that it enabled.

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Despite all this,

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the Caspian remains poorly understood.

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Luke Coffey,

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a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute,

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said that for American policymakers,

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the Caspian is a.

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Political black hole.

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It's almost like it doesn't exist.

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Noted that the State Department,

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there's 3 separate bureaus covering the 5 Caspian nations,

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and the sea falls along fault lines between different US military commands.

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That institutional fragmentation has consequences.

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It's produced a genuine

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strategic blind spot

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at a moment when the corridor

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is becoming actively shaping the course of two wars simultaneously.

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The Caspian faces an uncertain future.

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It's north-south Russian-Iran military access

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is increasingly contested by their adversaries,

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while its east-west trade and energy role holds the potential to rebalance

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all these different regional dynamics that

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make my average infantryman head explode.

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The tension between the Caspian as this theater of confrontation

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and the Caspian as a corridor of trade.

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It'll be shaped by decisions made in Washington,

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in Kiev,

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in Tehran over the coming years.

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The war in Ukraine and the war in Iran

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have exposed the Caspian Sea as this load bearing element

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of the Eurasian conflict.

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That means that understanding it right now is extremely important,

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building policy around it and closing any kind of

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knowledge gaps that we have.

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Are urgent tasks.

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A body of water long dismissed as irrelevant has become

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more and more consequential.

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One of the most important spaces in modern geopolitics.

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And the question here is what is the West's Caspian strategy?

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I'm your average infantryman,

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Chris Cappy.

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Thank you for watching.

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If you enjoyed this video,

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00:16:58.955 --> 00:17:02.375
check out this one here about what's left of Iran's military

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ending transmission.