Proxy war in Ukraine?

[Anomalocaris]

In the news today is Iran's acknowledgment that they supplied drones to Russia.  Iran claims it was a limited number before the start of the war.  Ukraine disputes that the number is or was small.  Yet on the other side, Russia is accusing the west of fighting a proxy war by supplying Ukraine with weapons.

Is Iran supplying Russia with weapons any different from the U.S. and Europe supplying weapons to Ukraine?

the nature of Iran supplying weapons to russia is somewhat different from what we normally consider proxy war.    The goal of a proxy war is to use local players with whom one has influence to attempt to resist or roll back the encroachment of local players acting to further the influence of one’s main opponent without engaging in direct military action against one’s opponent.

NATO support for ukraine definitely count as a proxy war by the US, using ukraine and to an lesser extent other nato states, as proxy, not to resist the encroachment of russian influence, but to further roll back russia from area of her long standing influence while consolidating her diminant american position over region of eastern europe represented by former warsaw pact states. 

Iran support of russia has a different objective than an mere mirror image of US objective in Ukraine.    Iran is not trying to resist or roll back western influence in Ukraine.   Iran is doing this to gain leverage, through a relatively weak form of blackmail, to bring the US back to the nuclear accord which the US unilaterally withdrew from, in order to remove the sanctions that the US unilaterally reimposed under trump.    the blackmail is weak because iranian aid is unlikely to decisively influence  the progress of the campaign over winter or  tip the outcome of the war,  and Iran does not have the means to escalate her intervention to affect the desires outcome if her initial blackmail fails. 


secondarily, iran also want a quid pro quo from russia, to the effect of because iran militarily supported russia in ukraine when no one else would, therefore regardless of the outcome in ukraine, russia should continue to support iran in syria or any other conflicts in the middle east.