Russia entered the war in Iran

Russia is providing Iran with intelligence information to identify positions of US forces, US officials say. The information included the location of US warships and aircraft in the Middle East. China remains away from the conflict for now.

Russia is participating, albeit indirectly, in the war in Iran, according to three officials with knowledge of information from Iran. intelligence.

According to these officials, Russia is providing Iran with information on possible targets to attack US forces in the Middle East.

This aid, until now unreported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict is now involve one of the main nuclear rivals two United States, endowed with capabilities of highly sophisticated intelligence information.

Since the start of the war on Saturday, Russia has transmitted the location of US military assets to Iran, including warships and aircraftsaid the three responsible, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. “Everything indicates that this is a very comprehensive effort,” said one of the sources.

Contacted by The Washington Post on Friday, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, refused to comment intelligence conclusions. Moscow called for an end to the war, which it called an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.”

A extension of Russian aid to Iran in terms of targeting is not entirely clear. The Iranian military’s ability to locate US assets was quite reduced, in less than a week of fightingsaid those responsible.

Two of the officials with knowledge of Russian support for Iran said the China did not appear to be helping Iran’s defensedespite the close relationship between the two countries.

High degree of sophistication

According to military analysts cited by The Post, information sharing is compatible with the pattern of Iranian attacks against US forces, including command and control infrastructures, radars and temporary structures, including the Ali Al Salem Air Basein Kuwait, which maintains the U.S. Air Force’s 386th Air Expeditionary Wing, and where six soldiers died.

Iran is “target early warning radars with great precision or radars beyond the horizon”, says Dara Massicot, expert on Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He is doing it in a very targeted way. It is targeting command and control structures”, he added.

Iran has a reduced number of military satellites and does not have a constellation of its own, which makes images provided by Russia’s much more advanced space capabilities especially valuable — especially at a time when the Kremlin has honed its own ability to select targets after years of war in Ukraine, Massicot says.

Second Nicole Grajewskiwho studies cooperation between Iran and Russia at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, there is a high degree of “sophistication” in Iranian retaliatory attacks, both on the targets chosen by Tehran and on its ability, in some cases, to saturate the defenses of the US and its allies.

“They are managing to pierce the anti-aircraft defenses”, he said, adding that the quality of Iranian attacks appeared to have improved even in relation to the 12-day war with Israel last summer.

Iran fired thousands of suicide drones and hundreds of missiles against US military positions, embassies and civilian installations, while the joint US Israel campaign struck more than 2,000 Iranian targets, including ballistic missile positionsnaval resources and the country’s leadership.

“O Iranian regime is being absolutely crushed”, declared Anna Kelly, spokeswoman for the White House, without commenting on any Russian support to Iran. “Retaliation with ballistic missiles decreases from day to dayits navy is being eliminated, its production capacity is being destroyed and its proxy allies barely offer resistance”, he added.

The CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment on The Post’s report.

If the United States adopted the Iran narrative that it considers potential targets all countries that are providing logistical support to the Americans and Israelis, the Kremlin’s support for the Iranians would put Russia in the US’s crosshairs — an unlikely scenario, which would represent a dangerous escalation in conflict.

Proxy war

Russian aid changes the picture of how several countries have become involved in a proxy war since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Throughout this conflict, US adversaries, including Iran, China and North Korea, provided Russia with direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry.

The United States delivered military equipment to Ukraine worth tens of billions of dollars and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s attack capabilities.

On Thursday, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskywrote on the social network X that the administration to strengthen protection against Iranian drones and that Kyiv would respond by sending “experts”.

O Iran has been one of Russia’s main supporters during the war in Ukraine, sharing technology to produce low-cost suicide drones, used repeatedly to saturate Kyiv’s anti-aircraft defenses and deplete Western stocks of interceptors sent to protect Ukrainian cities.

“The Russians know more than well what help is that we are giving to the Ukrainians,” said one of the officials with knowledge of Moscow’s support for Tehran. “I think were very pleased to be able to settle accounts”.

The quality of Russia’s intelligence collection is not at the level of the US, but continues to be among the best in the worldadded the same source.

The Post had previously reported that despite the blow suffered by one of its closest partners, the Kremlin sees possible advantages in a protracted war between the United States and Iran, including higher oil revenues and an acute crisis that diverts US and European attention from the war in Ukraine.

Still, the lack of direct military involvement of Moscow is also, in part, a sign of the need to concentrate efforts on other fronts, said Massicot.

The Kremlin “very clearly considers that this is not your problem nor your war. From the point of view of strategic calculation, Ukraine remains, by far, the number one priority”, says the analyst.