Putin’s friendship has limits — as Iran just found out

Follow live coverage here of escalating conflict in the Middle East.

As Tehran was being pounded by U.S. and Israeli bombs on Saturday morning, its top diplomat dialed Moscow’s number. 

On the other end of the line, according to an official Russian statement, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered his Iranian counterpart sympathy and promised his — verbal — support.

Iran, thus, became the latest country after Syria and Venezuela to feel firsthand what partnership with Russia does, and doesn’t, mean.

Since launching its full-scale war in Ukraine four years ago, the Kremlin has flexed its rhetorical muscle as the flag bearer of a so-called multipolar world. But, at decisive moments, its response on the ground in allied nations has been conspicuously anemic as their leaders came under attack. 

First, Syria’s Bashar-al-Assad learned in late 2024 that Russian backing did not guarantee the survival of his regime as rebel forces rampaged into Damascus. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, sitting in an American prison cell since early this year, will also be pondering where the Kremlin was in his hour of need. Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during the assault on Tehran, U.S. President Donald Trump announced.

Iran now threatens to become the latest example of the discrepancy between the Kremlin’s big talk in the face of American hegemony and the real world where that hegemony is increasingly on full display.

Symbolic support only

For Tehran, Moscow’s lackluster response should come as no surprise.

The writing has been on the wall since at least last summer, when — during a 12-day war with Israel that included a massive U.S. assault on Iranian nuclear sites — top Russian officials similarly offered statements of condemnation but no action. 

In the months that followed, Moscow has tried to contain the damage. It has defended the Islamic regime’s right to quash protests, which they, reports suggested, used Russian military equipment and technology to put down.

Russia in December agreed to provide €500 million worth of advanced shoulder-fired missiles as Tehran armed itself for a second U.S. attack, according to a report by the Financial Times.

And Moscow has publicly cast itself as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran, proposing to store enriched uranium stockpiles on Russian soil. 

Symbolically, the Iranian and Russian navies this month also held a joint drill in the Gulf of Oman — although Moscow apparently only provided one warship. Kremlin aide Nikolai Patrushev consequently announced more exercises with China’s participation would follow in the Strait of Hormuz.

But when push came to shove on Saturday, there was no talk of Moscow coming to Tehran’s aid militarily. 

Formally, Russia isn’t required to. Although Russia and Iran in April 2025 signed a strategic partnership treaty, it did not include a mutual defense clause. 

“I’d like to emphasize, that the signing of the treaty does not mean the establishment of a military alliance with Iran or mutual military assistance,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko clarified to Russia’s State Duma at the time. 

It has meant that while Iran supplied Moscow with Shahed drones and missiles during the war on Ukraine, the Kremlin isn’t about to join Tehran in waging another battle.

In the hours after Saturday’s attack, many social media users dug up Putin’s comments from June 2025 at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, where he defended Russia’s “neutral” stance during the first U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. 

He noted that at least two million former Soviet citizens were living in Israel. “It is almost a Russian-speaking country today. And we, of course, take that factor into account,” the president said at the time.

Digging in

Russia’s failure to intervene in Iran undoubtedly represents a reputational blow on the global stage. But it also might bring some spoils of war. 

Moscow will be hoping to deflect attention away from itself by highlighting the West’s — and particularly the U.S.’s — failure to live up to international norms.

It is also likely to entrench the Kremlin’s rigid position on Ukraine, which it has consistently framed as a defensive move against Western aggression. 

“It will be difficult to convince Putin that he was ever wrong [about the danger of the West,]” said Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist affiliated with University College London, on Telegram. “To the doubters he’ll point to Tehran and say: ‘It could have been us.’”

At the very least, if U.S.-brokered talks on peace in Ukraine break down, Moscow will have its talking points ready.

Among the first Kremlin figures to react Saturday was the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev.

“The peacekeeper is at it again,” he wrote on X, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump. “The talks with Iran were just a cover. Everyone knew that.”

Fyodr Lukyanov, a Russian foreign policy adviser to the Kremlin, went as far as suggesting that the events in Iran show that diplomacy with Trump was “plain pointless.”

Moscow will be hoping that is the message that stays with its remaining allies — rather than its own inaction.