The New Dark Age

Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to defend itself from attacks by US forces in the West Asia, the Washington Post reported on 6 March, citing three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The Kremlin has passed to Tehran the locations of US military assets, including warships and aircraft, according to the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the sources claimed.

If true, the assistance mark’s Russia first involvement, though indirect, in the war.

It “signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities,” the US-based newspaper wrote.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Moscow and Tehran have long had military and defense relationships. However, Russia declined to intervene militarily to help Iran when the US and Israel attacked it for 12 days in June 2025.

Russian President Vladimir Putin commented that he did not intervene due to the two million Russian Jews with Israeli citizenship.

“Israel today is almost a Russian-speaking country, two million people from the Soviet Union and Russia live there. We take that into account.”

“The extent of Russia’s targeting assistance to Iran was not entirely clear,” the Washington Post added.

The US and Israel launched a major military campaign against Iran on 28 February involving thousands of bombing sorties and missiles.

In response, Iran has fired thousands of ballistic missiles and drones at US targets in the Gulf, including military bases, radars, naval assets, and missile defense sites. An Iranian drone attack on a US base in Kuwait on Sunday killed six US soldiers.

When asked about Russian and Chinese support for Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was dismissive, saying, “They’re not really a factor here.”

Two of the officials speaking with the Washington Post said that China, the largest buyer of sanctioned Iranian crude, did not appear to be aiding Iran’s defense.

In contrast, recent reports indicate that China has provided Iran with new technology in an effort to prevent infiltration by US and Israeli intelligence, and to help Tehran defend itself from advanced US and Israeli warplanes.

This includes supplying Iran with advanced Chinese sensor systems and radars, such as the YLC-8B, capable of tracking stealth aircraft and conducting electronic surveillance.

US-based analysts speaking with theWashington Post sought to attribute Iran’s success in targeting US assets to Russian assistance.

Iran is “making very precise hits on early warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” said Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re doing this in a very targeted way. They’re going after command and control,” she added.

Nicole Grajewski of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government said there was a high level of “sophistication” in the Iranian retaliatory strikes.

“They’re getting through air defenses” more successfully than during the 12-day war last June, she said.

“The Russians are more than aware of the assistance that we’re giving the Ukrainians,” said one of the officials familiar with Moscow’s support for Tehran. “I think they were very happy to try to get some payback.”

The US has provided tens of billions of dollars of military, financial, and intelligence assistance to Ukraine in its war against Russia since 2022.

According to the Washington Post, the “Kremlin sees possible advantages in a prolonged war between the U.S. and Iran, including higher oil revenue and an acute crisis that distracts America and Europe from the war in Ukraine.”

Russia has seen the leaders of several of its allies overthrown in recent years, including Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top Iranian leaders were killed in a US-Israeli strike on the first day of the war.