Whilst the world’s attention is understandably on the potential Israeli hostage release, regional terror instigator Iran is poised to upscale its trade in supplying fellow rogue regimes with increasingly high end weapons.

The extremist mullahs ruling Tehran have long been known to overtly support Russia’s brutal reinvasion of Ukraine, initially supplying hundreds then thousands of the Shahed drones, which have wrecked so much damage on Ukrainian cities and national infrastructure. In addition, Iran have supplied tank rounds and artillery shells, in what has become Russia’s most important defence partnership since the war began.

Whilst this full-blown defence partnership has proven absolutely devastating to Ukrainian and European security, it is about to be similarly replicated in the Middle East.

As Putin blames the United States with one hand for increasing tensions in the region and magnanimously offering to help solve the current crisis himself, in a move straight out of the classical Kremlin playbook, with the other hand he is reportedly offering Tehran unprecedented defence cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defence.

And what is Russia to receive in return for such generosity shown to their Iranian partners in crime? Potentially, a desperately-needed halt in the Ukrainian advances in the south and east of Ukraine, as thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles are up for discussion to help turn the tide back in to Russia’s favour.

These new heightened fears concerning the increasing the Russian-Iranian defence partnership were recently confirmed this week by the White House administration, coming on the back of a September meeting when Iran hosted Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu, showing off a range of new ballistic missile systems to wet the Russian palette.

The US intelligence community is additionally concerned that Russia will supply Iran with attack helicopters, radars, combat-trainer aircraft and even fast jets. Whilst Russia’s long-vaunted ‘friendship without limits’ with Chinese premier Xi Jinping has resulted in some limited defence collaboration during Moscow’s war in Ukraine, this would pale in comparison to what we are seeing taking place between Tehran and Moscow.

The ramifications for regional security across the Middle East and in Europe are profound. The US and Britain maintain extensive security interests and partnerships across the Arabian Gulf, with around 45,000 US personnel and contractors and around 5,000 British routinely coming under drone and missile attacks from Iranian-directed proxies.

Indeed, attacks against US and UK bases in Iraq and Syria have peaked this year, as Iranian weapons continue to proliferate the region’s terror organisations, resulting in suspected attempted ballistic missile attacks against Israel – only prevented by superior US air defence systems.

Whilst this trend of attacks against American, British, and Israeli targets can continue to rise substantially should the Russian-Iranian defence relationship continue to develop unabated, it poses even more worrying threats to Ukrainian and thus broader European security.

Russia, whilst suffering enormous casualty figures and almost irreplaceable battlefield losses, can still churn out conscripts and Soviet legacy-era equipment at a rate which Ukraine simply cannot match. In this industrialised war of attrition, mass has a quality entirely of its own.

The now likely promise of thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles heading their way to Moscow could cause the already limited and overworked Ukrainian air defences to be overwhelmed, causing untold further destruction to Ukrainian infrastructure and cities, just at a time when Ukrainians are already bracing for this war’s second long harsh winter.

The West must act. It seems almost weekly that we must utter these words, such is the state of disorder in which the international system currently finds itself – but act, we must. As the US’ attention has partly pivoted back to long-term ally Israel, Europe must now finally be prepared to pick up the mantle, and come to Kyiv’s aid in a manner which politically it has often been left found wanting.

Air defence systems, sensors, intelligence and counter-missile batteries are going to be at an absolute premium, should the battlefields of the Donbas, and indeed cities and towns across Ukraine, be subjected to this likely flooding of Iranian missiles.

The expanding defence alliance between Iran and Russia has already caused destruction in Europe, and will very likely lead to increased threats in the Middle East too. This is a menace to global security which we can ill afford to ignore.