The Kremlin’s Rise in the Ruins of Tehran
A reading of the Russian conversation about the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz blockade, across official policy and commentary, and what it reveals about Moscow's strategic position.
In the months before the war, Iranian officials liked to say that Tehran had two reliable friends in the world: Moscow and Beijing. Friendship like this implies protection, which is why many Western analysts assumed an attack on Iran would trigger a military response from at least one of them. No military response came. What came instead was Putin’s personal condolences for Khamenei, China’s strong condemnation of the strikes as a “trampling on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter,” and, as the U.S. Navy’s blockade tightened around Iran’s ports, the IRGC seizing foreign vessels in the Strait of Hormuz while Iranian state media reported that Iran largely spared Russian ships from the restrictions. An intervention from Moscow and Beijing did arrive. It just wasn’t the one Western capitals were watching for.
History, as usual, had the answer. Russia has consistently profited from American entanglements in the Middle East in ways the United States itself has not. The 1979 Islamic Revolution destabilized a key American ally without requiring Soviet action. The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq gave Moscow’s proxies and partners room to expand while Washington bled resources and credibility. In the Iran war, Russia’s strategy is what it has always been. What differs is the scale of the return, and what it reveals about the nature of Russia’s alliance with Tehran.
The consensus across Russia’s policy class, intellectual establishment, and state media is unmistakable: the war is the best thing to happen to Moscow’s strategic position in a decade. The war itself is rescuing Moscow’s strategic position. That truth has only become harder to avoid since the Pakistan-mediated ceasefire announced on April 8. The Islamabad talks ended without agreement on April 12. The United States imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports the next day. Iran calls the blockade an act of war. The IRGC has seized two foreign vessels in the Strait in the week of April 21 and fired on a third. On April 21, Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely, citing what he called a “seriously fractured” Iranian government. On April 25, Trump canceled the planned trip of envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Islamabad after Iran’s foreign minister left without meeting them.
By April 26, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, had resumed shuttle diplomacy through Pakistan and Oman without an agreement and was heading next to Moscow to meet with Putin. Bloomberg reports, citing officials across European and Middle Eastern capitals, that the ceasefire phase has reinforced the view among allies and adversaries alike that the campaign is a strategic setback bolstering China and Russia. The active war is no longer the only frame. The blockade, the failed talks, the fractured government, and the third American carrier arriving in theater are all variations on the same theme. In the immediate term, none of them work against Russia.
Reading Russia in this war requires distinguishing layers. Lavrov, Peskov, and the Foreign Ministry are policy. Lukyanov and Trenin are the establishment intellectual consensus the Kremlin cultivates and at moments adopts as its own.RIA Novosti columnists like Victoria Nikiforova produce state-funded propaganda that is diagnostic of what Moscow’s political class considers safe to celebrate. And the behavior (the Anatoly Kolodkin in Matanzas, the reported Hormuz exemption for Russian ships, Urals crude pricing at nearly double the budgeted assumption) runs on a separate track from any of them. None of these layers has diverged from the others since the war began. That convergence is the signal.
The first thing Moscow calculated was Ukraine. On the first day of strikes, hours after Khamenei’s assassination, Alexei Chepa, a senior member of Russia’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said openly that he hoped the United States would become “preoccupied” with Iran and “forget” about Ukraine. Within days, Iran’s air defenses gave him what he asked for.
The numbers confirmed the calculation. Independent estimates put the combined U.S. and Gulf partner total at over 900 interceptors in 96 hours, consuming eighteen months of production from a manufacturing line that produces roughly 620 a year. Zelensky publicly confirmed that the United States requested Ukrainian drone interceptor technology to defend its bases from Iranian Shaheds, the same drones Kyiv has spent years learning to shoot down, and the U.S. Army shipped 10,000 Ukrainian-developed Merops drones to the Middle East within five days. The country fighting for its survival is now supplying the tools of defense to the country that was supposed to be supplying them.
Victoria Nikiforova, the EU-sanctioned RIA Novosti columnist, put the mood plainly: “Appreciate the beauty of the situation. Countless swarms of our drones fly regularly at the Ukrainian armed forces, and now they’ll be forced to hand over their drone interceptors to the Americans. The Americans need them more.” Celebrating Ukraine’s abandonment was safe from day one.
The military drain was the first dividend. The economic windfall came from the same shock. The war forced Washington to ease sanctions on Iranian oil to calm markets, and days later, to soften pressure on Russian energy exports too. By April 2, Russia’s Urals crude loaded at the Primorsk hub had hit $116.05 a barrel, the highest in more than thirteen years and nearly double the $59 assumed in Moscow’s 2026 budget. Russian oil export value rose to $2.02 billion a week in the 28 days to April 5, the highest weekly figure since June 2022. The architecture designed to contain Russia is being dismantled by a war against Russia’s own ally.
Timofey Bordachev of the Valdai Discussion Club called this the Napoleon trap: a great power imposes economic isolation on an adversary, then discovers that market logic forces it to undermine its own embargo. Russian readers would understand the rest of the analogy: blockade, overreach, ruin.
As the military and economic benefits accumulated, Russian commentators began watching something larger emerge from the same dynamic: the alliance system itself coming apart. The sanctions concessions that fed Russian oil revenues also forced Washington to lean on European and Gulf partners for help that did not come. Polish Prime Minister Tusk described the situation as “Putin’s dream plan”: NATO breaking apart, sanctions easing, an energy crisis in Europe, and aid to Ukraine drying up.
Russia watched as European allies refused to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz and gloated when Poland refused to answer the United States’ request for its Patriot systems. Rubio’s heated exchange with the EU’s Kaja Kallas at the G7 over the lack of allied support was amplified across Russian media. Dmitry Trenin described the shift: “Trump has abandoned the familiar model of the US as a paternal, often indulgent leader of the alliance and replaced it with a demanding hegemon.” Nikiforova went further, noting that if Iran’s Diego Garcia launchers were turned 180 degrees, London would be within range, and offering her assessment of European options: “When Washington orders the Europeans to die, they simply wrap themselves in a bedsheet and crawl toward the cemetery.” She omits that Spain has refused the use of its bases and that France has called for restraint. The uncomfortable truth is that Moscow’s bet on alliance erosion needs only the fractures to accumulate faster than the repairs.
Russian commentators applied the same logic to the Gulf monarchies directly. Writing for RIA on April 15, Davyd Narmaniya argued that the war turned Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE “from beneficial partners into vulnerabilities for Washington,” writing also that the United States “not only failed to protect them” but is “prepared to sacrifice these countries to their immediate goals.” His closing was sharper: when money is the only resource guaranteeing a state’s security, “there is a scenario where you cannot use it. Or someone else uses it, as Washington is now.”
The Gulf monarchies are absorbing the same lesson on their own terms. Iran’s missiles reached Ras Laffan and Yanbu before any American interceptor did. The kingdoms that built their strategic posture around American protection are now diversifying — quietly, in the vocabulary of resilience, but unmistakably. They are running their own calculations about what alliances are worth when the patron is distracted, the doctrine is contradicted, and the missiles are already in the air. Moscow does not need to be invited to that conversation. It only needs to be available when it ends.
The tone in Russian strategic commentary has since shifted from opportunistic to something closer to vindicated. Moscow has spent twenty years arguing that American hegemony is structurally fragile and that coercive interventions accelerate its decline. Twenty years of Russian argument is being proven by a war Russia is not even fighting. Petr Akopov, RIA Novosti’s senior foreign affairs columnist, put it most directly on April 18: by killing Khamenei and attacking Iran, Washington “launched an accelerated mode of de-Americanization of the Middle East and deepened European allies’ disappointment.”
Russia has used the war to broadcast a message to anyone still negotiating with Washington. Fyodor Lukyanov, who edits Russia in Global Affairs, warned that no country could trust an American negotiating process after the Iran strikes. Dialogue, in his framing, is now a tool for lowering an adversary’s guard before attacking. On April 21, Lavrov told reporters that Moscow sees only “threats, promises, assurances,” and invoked the “trap of false promises” of the 2015 nuclear deal. The lesson Russia is teaching: American negotiations are a prelude to American violence.
Meanwhile, with American allies refusing to step in, Moscow positioned itself as the major-power mediator Iran could publicly welcome. Lavrov offered to mediate. Iran’s envoy said Tehran would welcome it. Putin called Gulf leaders to discuss de-escalation. At the UN Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia drew comparisons between American claims about Iran’s nuclear program and Colin Powell’s 2003 case for invading Iraq. This posture costs nothing and yields a seat at whatever table eventually forms. Moscow lost diplomatic relevance in the Middle East when Assad fell, and the Iran war offers a low-cost chance to reclaim it. Moscow has been open about which side it sits on. On April 18, Lavrov told the Antalya Diplomacy Forum that the U.S. objective in Iran was “to control the oil that passes through the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz.” Russia is naming the war as a resource grab while sitting at the table meant to end it.
The dividends have since moved beyond commentary and into action. On March 31, the Anatoly Kolodkin entered the Bay of Matanzas with roughly 100,000 metric tons of Russian crude oil. Cuba had been in rolling blackouts for months. Few countries had been willing to test the embargo so directly. Russia’s decision to test it was a permission slip the war had written. The Washington Post reported that the docking came after Havana authorized fuel deliveries to the U.S. Embassy, and Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had “no problem” with countries sending oil to Cuba, “whether it’s Russia or not.” Washington did not formally end the embargo. In this instance, it chose not to enforce it, and announced as much.
Four months earlier, Trump’s own National Security Strategy had announced a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, vowing to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets” in the Americas. The doctrine named Russia as exactly the kind of extra-hemispheric power it existed to exclude. Trump endorsed the Russian delivery anyway.
While Washington chose not to enforce its embargo, Moscow chose to escalate. In the week ending April 6, Moscow launched over 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 glide bombs, and more than 40 missiles at Ukrainian targets. A Russian drone attack on a market in Nikopol killed five people on Saturday, April 4. Zelensky said the Iran war is draining the stockpiles Ukraine needs, especially Patriot systems, and added: “Russia has no intention of stopping.”
As Tehran’s proxy networks degrade under sustained bombardment, Russia is positioned to inherit what Iran can no longer hold alone. Last year, I documented for the Atlantic Council how Russia's relationship with the Houthis has evolved over the past two years from diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council to something far more operational. The GRU is present in Houthi-controlled Sana’a. Russian radar tracking technology has sharpened the Houthis’ ability to identify and target Western vessels in the Red Sea while ensuring safe passage for Russian and Chinese ships. The same Houthi operatives who sat at the Stockholm Agreement negotiating table were later found running human trafficking networks funneling Yemeni civilians to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
The Iran war appears to be accelerating this transfer. The pipeline that built the Houthi arsenal is under more pressure than at any point in years, and a weakened Iran pulls the Houthis deeper into Moscow’s orbit, with Tehran’s tolerance, because Russia becomes the more reliable partner by default: the one whose supply lines remain intact, whose intelligence assets remain protected, and whose diplomatic shield at the Security Council holds. The Red Sea becomes a Russian pressure point as much as an Iranian one, and Washington is unprepared for that shift.
The same blockade simultaneously feeds Russia’s grain pipeline to Iran and Russia’s oil revenues from the price spike it caused. Iran reportedly spares Russian ships from Hormuz restrictions while Russian wheat keeps Iran fed through the U.S. Navy’s blockade. The alliance moves in both directions, and both directions favor Moscow.
And yet. Rosatom is evacuating its nuclear specialists from Bushehr. More than 400 had already been evacuated, with another wave of 198 moving through Armenia. Rosatom’s chief called the situation the “worst-case scenario.” Moscow called it a logistics problem.
The Israeli strike on South Pars adds to the same exposure. Russia's wartime budget assumes a functioning export channel through a small number of high-volume terminals that sit above ground and within range. The terminals at Novorossiysk, Primorsk, and Ust-Luga sit at the center of Russia’s western export system; recent Ukrainian strikes against those ports shut roughly 40 percent of Russian crude-export capacity. The Druzhba pipeline pumping stations and the refineries at Ryazan and Tuapse are within range. If destroying a country’s export capacity becomes a normalized tool of warfare, that norm travels to every theater where energy infrastructure sits above ground and within range. The Russian budget assumes Urals at $59 a barrel and a functioning export channel. Both assumptions now depend on a precedent Israel just rewrote in the Persian Gulf, with American backing, against a country Moscow calls an ally. The dividend Russia is collecting from the Iran war is being booked against an exposure the same war is extending. As the Peterson Institute noted, Moscow’s muted response “is not a mistake. It is a strategic calculation.” Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul observed: “This war has given them all kinds of new money.”
The Moscow-Tehran relationship is a serious alliance with real infrastructure behind it. But Russia’s vision of a multipolar world could exist with either the current Iran or a weak one. Moscow thrives just as easily in fragility, in the informal networks and grey zones that emerge when states weaken. Mikhail Zygar called the Kremlin a system where “everything that happens is a real-time response to external stimuli devoid of an ultimate objective.” The Gulf monarchies are watching the same war and reaching their own conclusions about American security guarantees. For Moscow, a strong Iran is useful, a fragile Iran is more useful, and a ruined Iran is an asset. The countries that believe they have allies in Russia tend to discover, eventually, that what they had was an investor, and the investment portfolio just expanded.