London
|
Oct. 06, 2026, 2:27 p.m. ET
|
5 min read
Growing cooperation between Russia and Iran is enhancing their prospects on multiple fronts, from Ukraine to the Middle East.
Iran’s Shahed-136 drone designs, shared with Russia in late 2022, and the upgraded versions subsequently mass-produced by Moscow, have reshaped Russia’s war in Ukraine. In August alone, Russia deployed a record 2,800 jet-powered drones, whose increased speed makes them harder to intercept than earlier models.
Following Iran’s retaliation against a joint U.S.-Israeli strike, clandestine Russian satellite intelligence enabled Iranian missiles and drones to inflict significant damage on costly American radar installations and military bases across the Middle East. The Pentagon reports $3.7 billion in equipment losses alone, alongside the destruction of hundreds of buildings.
Analysts note that mutual hostility toward the U.S.-led international order has driven Russia and Iran toward a comprehensive partnership. Their cooperation spans artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, sanctions‑evasion networks, and Russian technical assistance for supersonic Iranian cruise‑missile engines designed to threaten U.S. warships.
Efrem Lukatsky/AP/File
An Iranian Shahed exploding drone launched by Russia flies through the sky seconds before striking buildings in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 17, 2022.
The partnership took root in Syria in 2015, after Iran persuaded Russia to intervene militarily to prop up embattled leader Bashar al‑Assad. Today it creates a mutually beneficial dynamic that is significantly shaping the conflicts each nation faces.
“There’s a menu of options and potentials for this relationship,” says Nicole Grajewski, an assistant professor at Sciences Po, in Paris, and associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. “The sky is the limit.”
She notes multiple points of close cooperation, from intelligence integration to technical support for advanced weapons systems.
“They’re driven together by both their common animosity to the U.S.-led international order [and] domestic factors,” says Dr. Grajewski, author of “Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine.”
“There are so many commonalities between the structure of these regimes, in terms of their internal security apparatuses and their leadership, [and] both view themselves as perennial targets of the West,” says Dr. Grajewski. “The war in Ukraine and the ongoing war with Iran have also given them more rationale to cooperate, because of the spread of technology between the two and the battlefield lessons that both have learned from each other.”
Relations have been fraught in the past, such as during Russia’s building of Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr, which from 1995 to completion in 2007 saw cost overruns and years of delays that Iranian officials often attributed to Russian game-playing under pressure from the West.
Russia also voted in 2010 with other U.N. Security Council members to sanction Iran, though it later played a key role in backing Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers – a deal from which President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States in 2018, despite Iran’s adherence to its terms.
Neither Russia nor Iran has openly discussed details about the depth of their cooperation.
Since 2023, one multiyear covert program has been Russian technology sharing to develop an Iranian supersonic cruise missile with a ramjet propulsion system, according to a Financial Times report last month. Its aim was to “develop a new class of weapon capable of threatening U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships,” the paper reported.
Moscow reportedly sent top missile and ramjet engine designers to Tehran, and prototypes have been tested, in a program that carried on through the summer, according to leaked correspondence.
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
A police officer and a rescue worker carry an unexploded warhead from a Shahed drone out of a school damaged by a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 1, 2026.
Specific and timely intelligence has also come to Iran from Russia. In one detailed report, CNN traced orbital data to find that after the first U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in late February, 14 Russian spy satellites flew specific trajectories to gather information on the Prince Sultan Air Base used by U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.
Two days later, in March, Iran scored direct hits that destroyed an AWACS radar platform – an aircraft with a $500 million price tag. Such precision would be “nearly impossible” for Iran to achieve, CNN quoted experts saying, without the “vital role” of Russian geospatial intelligence.
Analysts say such Russian help to Iran amounts to payback for U.S. and European intelligence support for Ukraine, as Kyiv has ramped up deep-strike energy and military targets inside Russia.
Iranian officials have long downplayed the significance of military ties with Russia, or denied them. But in recent weeks, media outlets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – whose Qods Force oversaw joint operations with Russia in Syria for years – openly acknowledged the Russian help.
“American security-military infrastructure pounded with the help of Russian pinpointing satellites,” ran a headline about the CNN report in the hard-line Kayhan newspaper. “The Russians are now, in a sense, responding to Western support for Ukraine, by hitting back at the Americans elsewhere through this assistance,” it concluded.
The breadth of Russia-Iran cooperation is meant to incorporate high-level state and institutional links to create secure financial channels, with sweeping plans to provide aircraft components and create energy and transport projects, according to a 44-page Russian document described by Fox News Digital last month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the “courage” of Iran, when he recently met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“In this difficult period [of the U.S. war], we are trying to provide you with the assistance you need,” Mr. Putin said.
Already that has included key battlefield support for Iran – and lessons of drone and missile swarms learned from Russia’s experience in Ukraine – in exchange for Russia’s use of Iran’s game-changing Shahed drones.
“[Iran] had this concerted effort to hit the high-value targets first, at least related to radar and surveillance,” says Dr. Grajewski at Sciences Po. “And that was pretty instrumental to at least the early stages of [Iran’s] campaign, because it did blind or impair some U.S. capabilities at that time.”
An Iranian researcher contributed to this report.