How extensive is Russia’s military aid to Iran? Experts weigh in as conflict intensifies
As the US-Israel war on Iran enters its second month, questions are mounting over the true scale of Russia’s military support for Tehran — with assessments ranging from President Donald Trump’s dismissive “a bit” to allegations of sophisticated satellite intelligence and drone technology
As missile strikes and drone attacks continue to reverberate across the Middle East, the extent of Russia’s military cooperation with Iran has emerged as a critical question shaping the trajectory of the conflict.
President Donald Trump offered his own assessment on March 13, telling Fox News that Moscow “might be helping them a bit.” A day later, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi offered a far more laconic assessment, describing the cooperation as “good” — a characterization that has prompted analysts to examine precisely what Russia is providing and whether it is making a meaningful difference on the battlefield.
Eyes in the sky: Satellite intelligence
According to experts, Russia’s most significant contribution to Iran’s war effort may be in space-based surveillance. Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and an expert on Russia’s space programme, told Al Jazeera that Moscow is likely providing data from its Liana system — Russia’s only fully functional spy satellite network.
“The [Liana] system has been created to spy on US carrier strike groups and other navy forces and for identifying them as targets,” Luzin said.
Russia has also played a foundational role in Iran’s own space capabilities. The Khayyam satellite, launched in 2022 from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome, orbits at 500 kilometres and offers one-metre resolution imagery. Moscow “can, in theory, receive and process data from Iran’s optical imaging satellite and share data from its own several satellites,” Luzin added.
This intelligence-sharing may have already influenced operations. On Wednesday, Tehran claimed to have struck the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier with multiple cruise and ballistic missiles — a claim the Pentagon dismissed as “pure fiction.” Days earlier, Iranian media reported a “massive blaze” caused by a strike on a US destroyer refuelling in the Indian Ocean; Washington did not comment.
Drones and Russian upgrades
Perhaps more consequential than satellite data is Russia’s role in upgrading Iran’s drone arsenal. Moscow has spent years refining the Shahed kamikaze drone — originally an Iranian design — for its own war in Ukraine, making them faster, deadlier, and equipping them with cameras, navigators, and occasionally artificial intelligence modules.
Now, some of those upgrades have returned to Iran. A Shahed drone launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah from southern Lebanon struck a British airbase on Cyprus on March 1, according to The Times newspaper. The drone reportedly contained Kometa-B, a Russian-made satellite navigation module that also acts as an anti-jamming shield.
Russia has also shared tactical doctrine refined on Ukrainian battlefields — specifically the strategy of launching waves of real and decoy drones to overwhelm air defence systems. “I think no one will be surprised to believe that Putin’s hidden hand is behind some of the Iranian tactics and potentially some of their capabilities as well,” British Defence Secretary John Healey said March 12 after Iranian drones struck a base used by Western forces in Erbil, northern Iraq.
A two-way street
The military relationship between Moscow and Tehran has long been reciprocal. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Iran has supplied Russia with ammunition, artillery shells, short-range ballistic missiles, firearms, helmets, and flak jackets — a flow of weaponry that has helped sustain Russia’s war effort.
Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of Ukraine’s general staff, told Al Jazeera that since US and Israeli strikes began on February 28, Russia has continued aiding Iran with “intelligence, data, experts and components” for weaponry.
Limits of Russian support
Yet for all the apparent cooperation, experts caution that Russia’s assistance has significant limitations — and may be driven as much by self-interest as by alliance.
Nikita Smagin, a Russian expert on Moscow-Tehran relations, told Al Jazeera that while Russia does supply data, “the data helps Iran, but not much.”
There are signs that Iran’s arsenal is being stretched thin. After launching up to 250 drones daily in early March, Iran has been deploying only about 50 drones per day, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University. “Iran ran out of steam really fast,” Mitrokhin said.
More fundamentally, Moscow may have little interest in seeing Iran achieve a decisive victory. The war has driven oil prices above $100 per barrel, benefiting Russia’s war economy. President Vladimir Putin “hasn’t achieved his goals in Ukraine and will therefore use anything, including the war [in Iran] and lies to achieve his vision,” Romanenko said.
Ruslan Suleymanov, an associate fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Center, characterized Moscow’s assistance as more symbolic than strategic. The current aid is “more of a goodwill gesture, an attempt to create an illusion of help, to show Tehran that despite the lack of formal commitments, Russia doesn’t leave its friend in need.”
Tehran’s own strategy
Notably, Moscow and Tehran lack a mutual defence clause, and Russia has not intervened directly in the conflict. Suleymanov suggested that Tehran fully understands the insufficiency of Russian aid.
“Iranians understand that the forces are not equal and it’s impossible to defeat the United States and Israel on the battlefield, and no Russian aid is going to help,” he said.
Instead, Iran has pursued its own strategy of expanding hostilities across the region through strikes on neighbouring states and disrupting global oil markets — a calculation that suggests Tehran views its partnership with Moscow as useful but ultimately secondary to its own regional calculus.
As the conflict continues, Trump’s assessment that Moscow “might be helping them a bit” may prove closer to the mark than either Kremlin or Iranian official statements would suggest — though the precise impact of Russian satellite data, upgraded drones, and battlefield tactics remains a matter of intense debate among military analysts.
About The Author
