Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics, George Mason University
Moscow may be benefiting from the war between Iran and the United States and Israel, but the longer it continues, the less it serves Russia’s interests.
As has been widely reported, Russia has provided limited direct assistance to the Islamic Republic against its attackers, despite Tehran’s extensive military support to Moscow since 2021.
This contrasts with how Tehran supplied large quantities of armed drones and ballistic missiles to Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Some see the ongoing war as yet another example of Putin doing little to help longstanding allies, as occurred with the downfall of long-time Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, the American abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and Russia’s lack of help to Tehran last year during the 12-Day War.
Moscow, though, has provided some help to Iran in this war. Russia has long supplied Tehran with surveillance and repression technologies used to prevent domestic unrest. This support may have contributed to the Islamic Republic’s ability to survive the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other top leaders—at least so far.
Moscow has also reportedly provided Tehran with intelligence support for Iranian drone attacks against targets including US troops in Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbours, Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan and elsewhere. T
hese attacks may have been undertaken in hopes of giving some of America’s Middle East partners an incentive to press Washington and Israel to halt strikes on Iran so Tehran would stop targeting them.
Putin may also see enabling Iranian drone attacks against US military targets in the region as payback for earlier US support to Ukraine for its drone strikes against Russian military targets both in occupied Ukraine and Russia itself. Putin’s desire for retribution on this score should not be underestimated.
Yet as gratifying as this may be to Putin, it has also created a problem for Russia that he may not have anticipated. Ukraine has offered to share its considerable experience in defending against drone attacks with countries now receiving them from Iran—an offer many have welcomed.
Perhaps this helps explain why Moscow has denied sharing intelligence with Tehran. But regardless of Russia’s role, the attacks themselves have given targeted states reason to value Ukraine and its survival more highly than before—something that is not in Russia’s interests.
This points to a larger tension: while Moscow and Tehran are both strongly anti-American, their interests are not fully aligned. While Tehran may view all countries cooperating with the United States or Israel as adversaries, Moscow has long sought pragmatic relations with many of them and tried to split some from Washington on key issues.
This approach paid off in the willingness of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and even Israel not to enforce Western sanctions against Russia. The longer Iranian attacks continue, however, the less willing these states may be to cooperate with Moscow if they believe it is complicit or unwilling to restrain Tehran.
At the same time, Moscow may appear less useful to Iran’s post-Ali Khamenei leadership if Putin cannot pressure or persuade Donald Trump to end his war against Iran.
Putin also seeks to preserve as much of Trump’s sympathy as possible regarding Ukraine. He would not want to provoke renewed large-scale US military support for Kyiv by appearing to obstruct Washington’s campaign against Tehran.
To some extent, the US-Israeli war on Iran has benefited Putin by diverting Western attention from Ukraine. Hostile Iranian actions that reduce Persian Gulf energy flows and push global oil and gas prices higher also benefit petroleum-exporting Russia.
Moscow has also gained from Trump’s reduced pressure on India over purchases of Russian oil, helping stabilize global supply and prevent prices from rising even further.
The longer the war continues, however, the more it risks imposing greater costs than benefits for Moscow. Prolonged conflict could deepen Middle Eastern reliance on Ukraine against Iranian drone attacks, strain Russia’s relations with regional states wary of Tehran, and further weaken the Islamic Republic, making it less useful to Russia.
For Putin, the war’s advantages are real—but they are likely to diminish the longer it lasts.
For days the conflict had focused largely on military bases, missile sites and command facilities, particularly in southern Iran, as part of the wider US-Israeli campaign that has struck thousands of targets across the country since the war began on February 28.
But since Wednesday evening, reported drone strikes on checkpoints in Tehran have pointed to a parallel line of pressure: the local security posts, patrol units and temporary deployments used to enforce control on the streets.
Iranian state-linked media said several checkpoints in Tehran were hit, killing members of the security forces and Basij militia. The reported locations included positions in multiple districts across the capital.
The development suggests the conflict is increasingly intersecting with the structures the state relies on to control neighborhoods rather than only its larger military infrastructure.
From fixed bases to moving checkpoints
Since the start of the war, residents across Iran say checkpoints and patrols have multiplied in major cities as authorities attempt to prevent unrest and maintain control.
At the same time, Iran International has received a steady stream of messages from viewers describing the locations of checkpoints, security deployments and temporary bases.
Some reports describe armed units inspecting vehicles at major highway entrances or intersections. Others mention security forces using schools, sports halls and religious institutions as temporary accommodation or staging points.
Messages received in recent days pointed to deployments in locations ranging from major Tehran highways to entrances to cities such as Karaj, Shiraz, Mashhad and Qazvin. Residents also described units stationed beneath highway bridges, near parks or inside parking areas where buses and motorcycles were parked overnight.
In several cases, viewers reported that checkpoints they had previously seen disappeared within hours or days, while others appeared to move to nearby streets or disperse into smaller patrol groups.
Some messages described security forces sleeping inside buses or personal vehicles and conducting mobile patrols rather than remaining in fixed positions.
Others said checkpoints that had been inspecting vehicles were suddenly dismantled, leaving only a few officers nearby.
Such reports cannot be independently verified in each case. But taken together they suggest that many deployments are becoming more fluid, with positions shifting frequently rather than remaining in one place.
A war over control of the neighborhood
The shift reflects a deeper pressure on the state’s local enforcement network.
For years the Islamic Republic has relied on a dense web of Basij, police and Revolutionary Guards positions to control neighborhoods and quickly suppress unrest.
During the recent nationwide protests earlier this year, these same networks formed the backbone of the crackdown that sealed off districts and quashed the demonstrations.
In wartime, those local security units appear to be playing an even more central role.
As larger bases and installations come under pressure from airstrikes, authorities appear to be relying more heavily on mobile checkpoints and temporary deployments to maintain control on the ground.
Now those fallback positions are also being drawn into the conflict.
The result is a battlefield that increasingly overlaps with everyday urban space. Instead of remaining confined to distant military facilities, the war is beginning to touch the street corners, highway entrances and neighborhood patrol routes where the state exerts day-to-day authority.
The figures suggest Tehran’s oil lifeline has not been cut despite a widening maritime crisis that has already disrupted shipping and shaken energy markets since the war began on February 28.
Instead, the conflict is evolving into a prolonged contest over energy flows: Iran continues exporting oil – largely to China – while simultaneously applying military pressure on one of the world’s most important oil chokepoints.
The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage off Iran’s southern coast connecting the Persian Gulf to global markets, normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
But the waterway has effectively become a war zone.
Since the start of hostilities, at least 16 commercial vessels have been struck or attacked in and around the strait and the wider Persian Gulf, according to a Reuters tally.
The incidents have included attacks on tankers, bulk carriers and container ships, forcing evacuations, halting port operations in parts of Iraq and driving insurers and ship operators to reconsider voyages through the area.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned that ships passing through the strait could be targeted, reinforcing fears that the waterway is now being used as a pressure point in the wider conflict.
Release of strategic reserves
The growing disruption has pushed the International Energy Agency and major consuming nations to take the extraordinary step of releasing 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, the largest such intervention in the agency’s history.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the decision had already had a “strong impact” on markets and was aimed at stabilizing supply after the war triggered one of the biggest oil disruptions on record.
The agency estimates global supply could fall by 8 million barrels per day in March as production across the Middle East is curtailed and shipping through Hormuz slows to a fraction of normal levels.
But the reserve release has done little to calm markets.
Oil prices briefly surged above $100 a barrel this week and remain volatile as traders weigh the risk that shipping through the Persian Gulf could remain constrained for weeks or months.
Analysts say the problem is not simply the availability of oil but the difficulty of moving it safely through a militarized sea lane.
Joel Hancock, an energy analyst at Natixis CIB, said markets were questioning how quickly emergency reserves could reach buyers, warning that a market balanced through stock releases would be “far less logistically efficient.”
Shockwaves beyond oil
The war has also begun to ripple through global energy markets beyond crude.
In Europe, gas prices rose sharply as fears grew that tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf could disrupt shipments of liquefied natural gas, around 20% of which normally transits the Strait of Hormuz.
Qatar, one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, has declared force majeure on some shipments, tightening global supplies and raising concerns about Europe’s ability to refill depleted gas storage before next winter.
Financial markets have reacted nervously as well. Rising oil prices have revived fears of inflation and pushed investors to scale back expectations of interest rate cuts by major central banks.
The war’s central energy paradox is that Iran cannot fully shut global oil flows without hurting itself, yet it has shown it can make the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz dangerous enough to rattle markets and force governments to act, even while keeping a substantial share of its own exports – mainly to China – moving.