The regional scene is moving, day after day, towards greater complexity and escalation at the same time, under the pressure of the American and Israeli war against Iran, which has intensified since 28 February. Fears are growing that this war may move beyond its limited scope and develop into a broad regional confrontation, and perhaps even an international conflict open to extremely dangerous possibilities.
In this context, the Washington Post revealed in a report published on 6 March that Russia had supplied Iran with sensitive intelligence that could help it target American forces in the Middle East. If accurate, such information would add an exceptionally dangerous dimension to the course of the war and could significantly reshape the balance within it.
These leaks carry exceptional significance because they suggest that Moscow, Tehran’s most consistent ally, may have moved from the position of a cautious international observer to that of a party involved, even if indirectly, in the ongoing war. Such a shift opens the door to a wider theatre of escalation and strengthens fears that the conflict could slide into a broader confrontation between major international powers.
Since the outbreak of the war at the end of last month, the fireball appears to have kept rolling beyond the two direct sides of the confrontation, casting its shadow over the Gulf states and then extending to Azerbaijan and Türkiye, and even to Russia itself. Within this tangled scene, a central question emerges: what approach governs Russian thinking in dealing with this war?
What Do the Leaks Say?
The leaks reported by the newspaper, based on statements by three officials familiar with American intelligence assessments, indicate that the information transferred to Iran included the locations of American warships, the positions of military aircraft in the region, and the locations of other military assets spread across several countries.
This type of precise information could give Tehran a significant operational advantage, helping it determine the deployment sites of American forces with greater accuracy, thereby improving its attack planning and enhancing its ability to select more sensitive targets for missile strikes or drone attacks.
In that sense, the value of this intelligence is not limited to reducing the cost of random strikes, important as that is for Tehran. It also extends to increasing the probability of hitting targets more accurately and therefore inflicting more consequential losses on American forces.
Although these leaks rely on unnamed and undisclosed sources, making it difficult to verify them with certainty, a number of recent indicators, especially the success of some Iranian strikes in causing direct hits inside American bases in the region, may lead some assessments to conclude that the claims in these leaks likely contain a meaningful degree of truth.
By contrast, the United States has attempted to downplay the actual weight of this leaked intelligence. This was expressed by several officials within the American administration, foremost among them President Donald Trump, who stressed that any Russian support for Iran, even if proven, does not appear to be a decisive factor in the course of the war. He also insisted that Washington is continuing to achieve its objectives at a faster pace than expected.
Not Just Intelligence
According to what the Washington Post published, Russian support for Iran was not limited to supplying intelligence on the locations of American bases and forces in the Middle East. It also extended to a more sensitive level involving direct military support through advanced weapons systems with both defensive and offensive characteristics, as highlighted by the Financial Times in a report published in February.
According to the newspaper, Moscow signed a military agreement with Tehran in December worth 589 million dollars, based on leaked Russian documents it reviewed, in addition to testimony from several people familiar with the details of the deal.
The report stated that Russia intends to supply Iran with 500 portable Verba launch platforms, along with 2,500 9M336 missiles. These are advanced air defence systems that would enhance Iran’s ability to engage low flying aerial targets, including aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, and drones.
Analysts believe that bringing such systems into service in Iran could increase its efficiency in confronting air strikes reliant on low altitude flight, especially those targeting infrastructure or sensitive sites.
Russian involvement does not appear to stop at this deal. Other reports stated that Iran received up to six Russian Mi 28 attack helicopters in January, while other reports in late 2025 spoke of the possibility of Tehran acquiring 16 Russian Su 35 fighter jets, reflecting a clear trend toward raising the level of military cooperation between the two sides.
This path comes within a broader framework shaped by the comprehensive strategic partnership treaty signed by Moscow and Tehran in January 2025, which aims to expand economic, military, and security cooperation between the two countries over the next two decades.
The treaty covers a wide range of files, including defence, counter terrorism, energy, finance, culture, technology, information, cyber security, peaceful nuclear energy, regional coordination, environmental issues, and combating money laundering and organised crime.
In this sense, Russian assistance to Iran, if proven credible, does not appear to be merely tactical manoeuvring linked to the current war. Rather, it reflects a wider strategic path aimed at entrenching a long term partnership between the two sides, which could contribute to reshaping part of the regional balance of power.
What Are the Implications for the Course of the War?
There is little doubt that this type of potential Russian intelligence support has left a visible mark on battlefield developments, especially regarding the type of American targets struck and the accuracy with which they were hit, particularly when compared with what happened during the twelve day war in June, when most Iranian attacks were directed at the Israeli interior through missile barrages that were largely random and lacked precision.
In the current round, however, the picture appears markedly different, whether in terms of the nature of the targets or the level of accuracy. The attack that targeted American bases in Kuwait, for example, and reportedly resulted in the death of six American soldiers, represents an unprecedented development and strengthens the assumption that Tehran received precise intelligence regarding troop deployment points and their positions inside that base.
The pattern was not limited to Kuwait. Similar strikes targeted residential units where American soldiers were present in both Bahrain and the UAE, in addition to American launch platforms in several Gulf states after their locations were identified with notable precision. This suggests that the target bank was not the product of conventional observation or operational guesswork, but was instead based on deeper and more specific intelligence.
The same applies to the two American aircraft carriers in the region, both of which were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. Regardless of the debate over whether those attacks caused direct hits, the mere ability to identify the locations of the two carriers and designate strike points with that degree of precision reveals access to highly sensitive intelligence. This appears to have clearly unsettled American calculations and imposed a more complicated battlefield equation than had been expected.
Moscow’s Approach Between Tehran and Washington
Moscow’s approach to the current war appears to rest on two governing principles it does not seem prepared to cross. The first is avoiding a direct and declared clash with the United States through open military involvement in this war. The second is preserving its strategic alliance with Iran and preventing the collapse of that alliance, but without allowing this to drag Russia into an open confrontation or open a new front that would burden it politically, militarily, and economically.
In light of these two principles, Russia views Iran as an advanced political and security line that cannot be abandoned. Moscow believes that any major collapse in Iran’s position or in the structure of its regime would produce dangerous repercussions for the balances that serve Russian interests, granting the United States and the Western camp additional strategic gains in a region of great sensitivity to Moscow. Preventing such a collapse therefore becomes a Russian priority no less important than avoiding direct involvement in the war itself.
From this perspective, the nature of Russian intervention can be understood. It is a calculated intervention that does not seek to settle the battle decisively in favour of one side over the other, nor does it aim to place Russia in a direct face to face confrontation with the United States.
Moscow is not seeking to enable Tehran to achieve an overwhelming victory over Washington that would provoke an uncontrolled response. Nor, on the other hand, is it willing to accept that the United States should succeed in imposing complete dominance over Iran or pushing it into a severe strategic defeat.
What Russia wants, in essence, is to regulate the rhythm of the conflict in a way that produces a degree of relative balance, not an absolute victory that would allow its American rival to advance into its vital sphere, and not a crushing defeat that would bring down one of its most important regional allies.
On that basis, Russian support for Iran appears aimed at narrowing the power gap, even temporarily, between Tehran and Washington, thereby reducing, to some extent, the major imbalance in military capabilities between them. Such support may not alter the equation fundamentally, but it could contribute to prolonging the war, a scenario that does not seem far from Russian calculations and may in fact align with them to a considerable degree.
From the Russian perspective, prolonging the conflict means a gradual draining of American military and weapons capabilities. It also means added pressure on the American economy, increasing disruption within the US political sphere, and a redirection of a meaningful portion of American attention toward this confrontation, thereby slightly reducing focus on the Ukrainian front. All of these outcomes serve Moscow’s interests to varying degrees.
There is also another approach that does not seem far removed from the Russian mindset, namely that this support may carry an element of retaliation or constitute an indirect response to the extensive military and intelligence support the United States has provided to Ukraine in its war against Russia. In this sense, the region appears to be sliding further into a model of proxy wars: indirect American support for Ukraine against Russia, matched by indirect Russian support for Iran against the United States.
This must be considered alongside the fact that Russia, economically and militarily strained by the Ukraine war for nearly four years, does not appear inclined to open a new conflict front with the United States, especially at a moment when Donald Trump has attempted to lower tensions with Moscow through a more flexible and pragmatic discourse compared with the harder line taken by his predecessor Joe Biden.
What Are the Implications for the International Order?
If Russian support for Iran is indeed confirmed, whether in intelligence or weapons, the region would be entering an extremely sensitive turning point in the course of the conflict. This could push the confrontation beyond its current triangular framework involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, and even beyond its regional extension into the Gulf, Azerbaijan, and Türkiye, bringing it closer to a broader international confrontation among major powers, including nuclear powers.
From this standpoint, the scene is no longer about a passing military escalation, but about deeper transformations that could affect the structure of the international order itself and open the door for other powers to enter the conflict, either directly or through different forms of indirect support. Such a path could widen the scope of confrontation in a way that places the entire global geopolitical map before the possibility of reshaping and revision.
From the very first moment the war erupted, attention turned to both Moscow and Beijing as two of Tehran’s leading international allies. Both were subjected to sharp criticism over what was described at the time as neutrality, or even abandonment. Yet the information and leaks gradually emerging suggest that this positioning may not necessarily have reflected an absence of support, but rather a different pattern of involvement whose contours may become clearer as the conflict expands and moves closer to becoming a major international crisis.
In the end, these leaks reopen questions on a wide scale about the direction the war could take, the limits of possible escalation, and the repercussions it may have for both the region and the international system.
Day after day, events appear to be slipping along an open ended escalatory track, vertically and horizontally, in the near complete absence of any effective mediation or serious effort to contain the slide, as though all parties are living with this escalation or tacitly accepting it despite the catastrophic dangers it carries, dangers from which no one would be spared.
