WP: Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target missiles and UAVs at the US military

Russia is providing Iran with intelligence to target American troops in the Middle East, The Washington Post writes, citing three sources. This is the first evidence of Moscow's indirect participation in the war in the Middle East, the newspaper notes.

Details . Moscow provided Tehran with information about the location of American military installations, including warships and aircraft, the newspaper's sources said. “It looks like this is a pretty big initiative,” one said.

• ️ The scale of military assistance to Russia remains unclear, WP emphasizes. The newspaper's sources said the Iranian military's ability to detect American troops had declined since the start of the war.
• ️ “Russians are well aware of the assistance we provide to Ukrainians. I think they were very happy to try to repay us in kind,” one of the newspaper’s interlocutors said. He added that the quality of Russian intelligence does not reach the level of the United States, but is still among the best in the world.
• ️ An expert on Russian military forces from the Carnegie Endowment, Dara Massicot, in a conversation with WP, noted that Iran carries out very precise strikes on early warning radars. At the same time, Tehran has only a few military satellites and does not have its own satellite constellation, which makes Russian images extremely valuable.
• ️ Iran's strikes in this war are complex, both in terms of selecting targets and in terms of penetrating American defenses, said Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Russia-Iran relations at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center: "They're getting through air defenses." According to the expert, the quality of Iranian strikes in this war has improved even compared to the 12-day war in the summer of 2025.
• ️ The Russian embassy in the United States did not respond to the newspaper’s request. The CIA and Pentagon declined to comment.
• ️ China does not appear to be providing Iran with defense assistance despite close ties between the countries, two of the newspaper's official sources said.

Context . Iran has fired thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles at American targets, diplomatic missions and civilians in the Middle East.