A class of foreign policy commentators has spent the better part of four years insisting that Russia was winning in Ukraine, that Kyiv’s cause was hopeless, and that the West had only itself to blame for provoking the conflict. These same voices have now pivoted, with remarkable speed, to a new claim: the American campaign against Iran is a gift to Vladimir Putin. This line of thinking finds reasons to declare the American action a mistake. That is why their logic on Iran deserves the same skepticism as their logic on Ukraine.
The short-term case is easy enough to make, and it contains a grain of truth. America is busy with its campaign, and the skies over the Persian Gulf. Ukraine inevitably slips down the priority list. Oil prices have surged since the campaign began. Russia received a 30-day sanctions waiver allowing countries to buy Russian oil, handing Moscow fresh revenue at a time when financial pressure on the Kremlin was beginning to bite. For a few weeks, perhaps a few months, Russia may indeed benefit.
But if you zoom out, the picture looks considerably grimmer for Russia long term.
Iran was Russia’s most useful partner, and the help flowed both ways. Iranian drones kept Russian forces in the fight in Ukraine. Moscow, on its behalf, sent Tehran Mi-28 attack helicopters, Yak-130 trainer jets, and Krasukha electronic jamming systems. It signed a contract for 48 Su-35 fighters, shared satellite intelligence on American warship positions and delivered three Kilo-class submarines. Days before the current war began, it closed a fresh €500 million deal for Verba shoulder-fired air defense missiles.
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On top of that, Russian engineers took Iranian Shaheds, modified them, and sent the upgrades back to Tehran. The drones got faster, harder to jam, and more lethal. Beyond that, the two countries shared a single strategic project: diminishing Western influence, whether in the Middle East or Caucasus, and together they posed a compounding challenge to American power.
That partnership is now under military assault. If the campaign succeeds in degrading Iran’s military capacity, or in destabilizing the regime itself, Russia loses its most important strategic partner outside of China. Moscow is left more isolated, more dependent on Beijing, and with fewer cards to play.
For more than a decade, the prevailing narrative held that American power was in irreversible retreat. The debacle in Afghanistan, the “red line” fiasco in Syria and annexation of Crimea, all pointed in the same direction. American resolve had diminished. But the campaign, whatever its ultimate outcome, has already disrupted that narrative. The U.S. has shown a willingness to project force at enormous scale. Decades of retreat have, in a matter of weeks, given way to a forceful reassertion of American military credibility. For Russia, which built its entire foreign policy since 2008 on the assumption that America lacked the stomach and power, this is inconvenient.
Critics point to the depletion of American missile stockpiles and say the operation is reckless: if this campaign burns through air defense and munitions at the current rate, the United States may find itself short in a future crisis. But the right conclusion is the opposite of the one they draw. If the Iran campaign reveals that American arms are too few for what America faces, that is a wake-up call, and one that is long overdue. The same critics who worry about stockpiles today are often the ones who argued that America could not spare air defense systems for Ukraine because it had too few for itself. That should have triggered a massive production effort four years ago.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it must have been a warning that military budgets had to match a changed world. But Washington kept spending at peacetime levels while a land war raged in Europe. The same applies to the lessons of drone warfare. Four years of war in Ukraine should have taught every Western military how drones have changed the battlefield, how swarms overwhelm traditional defenses, and how cheap mass production matters. Yet Western arsenals remain configured for a previous era. If the Iran campaign forces that reckoning, it will have done what four years of watching Ukraine failed to accomplish. The answer is more investment and faster production. Every shortfall exposed today strengthens the case for the kind of military buildup that will make the Western alliance Russia confronts in Europe far harder to challenge.
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The broader principle is this: everything that strengthens the Western alliance, its military capacity, its willingness to use force, diminishes Russia’s strategic position. The Iran campaign, for all the risks it carries, has the potential to do all three. If you do not believe me, here is Sergey Lavrov, on how the U.S. is pushing Russia in the corner. Russia’s network of client states has contracted sharply over last year and a half. Moscow’s ally Maduro is gone in Venezuela and Cuba, once flagship partners in the Western Hemisphere, faces deep economic crises with Moscow offering little beyond rhetoric. In Syria, the fall of the Assad regime put Russia on the back foot, and the U.S. negotiating Armenia and Azerbaijan peace deal, left it on the sidelines. The war in Iran now threatens to eliminate yet another pillar of the axis Moscow helped sustain.
That said, everything depends on how the campaign concludes. If the Iranian regime survives, battered but triumphant, and the campaign ends without a durable strategic gain, that would confirm every narrative Moscow has promoted about American overreach. A successful conclusion rewrites the strategic landscape in ways that leave Russia weaker.