The news broke last Friday like a thunderclap: Russia has been feeding Iran the precise locations of U.S. warships and aircraft — real-time, actionable intelligence used to kill Americans. Six U.S. service members are already dead in Kuwait, struck by an Iranian drone. The CIA’s station in Riyadh was hit, killing another. According to officials who spoke to the Washington Post, Moscow’s assistance has been described as “a pretty comprehensive effort.”
This is not a Cold War chess match or a diplomatic spat. This is Russia helping to murder American soldiers, and we should be furious.
But here’s the part that should make your blood boil even more: This is not new. Russia has been waging war against the United States for decades. Only the weapons and scenarios have changed.
IRAN-RUSSIA PARTNERSHIP ‘WILL CONTINUE,’ IRANIAN FM SAYS WHEN ASKED ABOUT WAR INTEL
The intelligence Russia handed Iran wasn’t some impulsive act of spite. It is the latest expression of a systematic, patient, multifront campaign to degrade American power, sow American chaos, and, when the opportunity presents itself, get Americans killed. Moscow reportedly calculated that feeding targeting data to Tehran was payback for U.S. support of Ukraine.
Think about that: Russia is so committed to harming the U.S. that it will help a theocratic regime launch drones at our soldiers as a form of revenge. This is not the behavior of a rival power jostling for geopolitical advantage. This is the behavior of an enemy. And make no mistake — the battlefield extends far beyond the Middle East.
For years, Russia has been running a sophisticated, well-funded influence operation designed to poison American democracy, destabilize American society, and undermine American scientific and agricultural leadership. In 2016, its interference in U.S. elections was already “more sophisticated than in prior election cycles,” according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It didn’t stop. In 2020, it continued. In 2024, the Justice Department charged two employees of RT (formerly Russia Today) — Russia’s state propaganda network — with funneling nearly $10 million into an American media company to spread Kremlin narratives. Microsoft documented Russian operatives manufacturing viral videos to stoke U.S. racial and political divisions. Meta banned RT globally. TikTok removed Russian state accounts for what it called “covert influence operations.” Every major American tech platform has had to fight back against an onslaught of Kremlin disinformation — not because Russia wants to win an argument, but because it wants to damage America.
And it doesn’t stop at politics. Russia has extended its information war into American public health and food security — a front most Americans don’t even know exists.
For years, Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik have relentlessly attacked American biotechnology, pumping out a torrent of anti-GMO propaganda designed not to inform but to cripple. Researchers at Iowa State University analyzed years of news coverage and found that nearly all articles using “GMO” as clickbait were published by RT — and that the disinformation precisely mirrored the talking points of U.S.-based activist groups opposing genetic engineering. This was not coincidental. It was coordination.
Russia has been at this since the Cold War. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union fabricated an elaborate disinformation scheme blaming the HIV virus on U.S. military bioweapons research — planting the story in a sympathetic Indian newspaper and then laundering it through secondary outlets until it achieved the appearance of credibility.
Russia has also attacked on other fronts. A study published by academics in 2018 found that thousands of Russian social media accounts were spreading anti-vaccine messaging, even well before COVID-19. From an examination of almost 2 million tweets posted between 2014 and 2017, the researchers found that Russian troll accounts were significantly more likely to tweet about vaccination than were Twitter users generally.
They noted that Russian tweets like, “Apparently only the elite get ‘clean’ #vaccines. And what do we, normal ppl, get?!” seemed intended to exacerbate socioeconomic tensions in the U.S.
Today, Russia is providing real-time intelligence to a regime actively firing missiles and drones at American service members. It is doing this while simultaneously running propaganda operations to divide Americans against each other — undermining confidence in American vaccines and food safety, meddling in our elections, and supplying the very drones and missiles Iran is using in battle.
Iran’s foreign minister has publicly boasted that military cooperation with Russia “continues and will continue,” while the Kremlin calls the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran “an unprovoked act of armed aggression.” This from the government that launched a full-scale, merciless invasion of Ukraine. It would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting.
RUSSIA DISTANCES ITSELF FROM IRAN CONFLICT: ‘NOT OUR WAR’
America is not in a cold war with Russia. It’s a hot one being fought on multiple fronts simultaneously, in ways designed to keep us confused about who is attacking us and how.
The propaganda war, the election interference, the anti-science disinformation campaigns, and the intelligence handed to Iran’s targeting systems are not separate stories. They are chapters in the same book, written in Moscow, with American casualties on every page. It is long past time to name the enemy plainly and respond with the seriousness this ongoing assault demands. Finally, part of that restatement of the situation must be to acknowledge that Putin is the instigator, the enemy who is the crux of the problem.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Scholar at the Science Literacy Project. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.