Russia providing Iran intelligence to target US forces, officials say

Russia providing Iran intelligence to target US forces, officials say - report

ByARIELLA ROITMAN

Russia is providing Iran with information to target US forces in the Middle East, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing three officials familiar with the matter. 

According to the report, Russia has been giving Iran the locations of US military assets since the outbreak of the war, including warships and aircraft.

This signals that the expanding conflict now includes one of the US's biggest nuclear competitors with "exquisite intelligence capabilities," The Post noted, adding that it also marks a shift from what experts previously thought, namely that Russia would stay away from the conflict and limit its response to diplomatic condemnations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged earlier this week for hostilities to stop and for a return to political and diplomatic efforts, claiming he was ready to support peaceful, compromise solutions based on international law.

'Putin has other priorities'

On Thursday, Anna Borshchevskaya, ⁠a Russia expert at the Washington Institute, said that, beyond Iran, “Putin has other priorities, and chief among them is Ukraine,” Reuters reported

“It would be foolish for Russia to go into a direct military confrontation with the United States," she added.

The report also cited a senior Russian source who said that “the escalation in and around Iran and the Gulf is already ​diverting attention from the war in Ukraine. That’s just a fact. Everything else is just emotion about a ‘fallen ally.'"

Military, nuclear aid already supplied

Moscow had helped Iran build military capacity by supplying missiles, air defense systems, and technology, Reuters added, in efforts intended to bolster deterrence and complicate US operations in the region. 

In April of last year, Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad announced that Russia would fund a new nuclear plant in Iran.

The two countries would jointly undertake "the construction of new nuclear energy facilities and the completion of phases two and three of the Bushehr power plant," he said.

Later, in September, Russia provided Tehran with a series of military upgrades, including Russian MiG-29 fighter jets and S-400 air defense systems. 

However, the extent of Russia’s recent intelligence input was not entirely clear, according to The Post's report. The Iranian military’s own ability to locate US forces has been degraded less than a week into the fighting, said the officials.

Lines in the Sand

Lines in the Sand – Iran War

Martin Armstrong

The conflict now unfolding with Iran is beginning to expose a series of geopolitical lines that had been quietly building for years. What is striking about the current situation is not simply the military confrontation itself, but the reaction of various nations. The world is no longer responding as it did in earlier conflicts where alliances moved almost automatically behind Washington. Instead, governments are drawing their own lines in the sand.

The United States and Israel are presently the two nations directly engaged in military operations against Iran. While Washington has access to bases throughout the Middle East, most of those countries are not actively participating in combat. Gulf states such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates host American military infrastructure, but their involvement largely reflects long-standing defense agreements rather than enthusiastic participation in a new regional war. These nations find themselves caught between two competing pressures: their security arrangements with the United States and the geographic reality of living within missile range of Iran.

What has been particularly revealing is the response in Europe. Spain openly refused to allow the United States to use its bases at Rota and Morón for operations against Iran, sparking a diplomatic confrontation with Washington. That decision has highlighted the growing divide inside NATO. During the Cold War and even in the early post-Cold War era, European governments generally aligned themselves with U.S. military policy. Today that unity is no longer automatic. European leaders increasingly calculate their own political and economic risks before committing themselves to American military campaigns.

The reluctance to join the conflict reflects deeper concerns about escalation. Many European governments are already facing fragile economies, political fragmentation, and rising social tensions. Opening another military front in the Middle East while the war in Ukraine continues would add another layer of uncertainty to an already unstable geopolitical environment. As a result, several governments are publicly urging diplomacy rather than military expansion.

What we are witnessing is the emergence of a fragmented geopolitical landscape where alliances are no longer rigid. Countries are evaluating their interests in a far more transactional way. Some governments provide logistical support while avoiding direct involvement. Others refuse cooperation altogether. Meanwhile, regional actors pursue their own strategic agendas independent of traditional Western alliances.

When crises arise, the difference between formal alliances and genuine strategic alignment becomes visible. The current situation with Iran is exposing those differences in real time. Nations are making calculations not only about military risk but also about energy markets, economic stability, and domestic political pressures.

The phrase “lines in the sand” has long been associated with the Middle East, yet today it applies equally to the diplomatic landscape surrounding the conflict. Countries are defining the limits of their involvement, sometimes publicly and sometimes quietly behind the scenes. These decisions reveal a world where geopolitical loyalties are becoming far more fluid than they once appeared.

Russia: No justification for US-Israeli war on Iran

No justification for US-Israeli war on Iran – Moscow

RT

There is no justification for the ongoing US-Israeli strikes on Iran as the Islamic Republic posed no threat to either nation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Washington and West Jerusalem have framed their attacks on Iran as preemptive measures aimed at destroying its uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs. The Islamic Republic insists that its nuclear program is peaceful and has denounced the strikes as entirely unprovoked.

Speaking to RIA Novosti on Wednesday, Zakharova stated that “although we are hearing claims from the US and Israel that they are even supposedly defending themselves… no one attacked them, no one threatened them.”The Russian diplomat noted that Iran had always been willing to engage in negotiations with the West.

Moscow previously condemned the US-Israeli strikes as a “premeditated and unprovoked act of aggression” aimed at toppling a government that “refused to yield to the dictates of force and hegemonic pressure.”

Commenting on the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the first wave of attacks unleashed last Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin characterized it as a “cynical violation of every norm of morality and international law.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry has similarly denounced the “practice of political assassinations and the ‘hunting’ of leaders of sovereign states.”

According to Iranian authorities, aside from Khamenei and a number of senior commanders, at least 168 children, as well as teachers and staff, were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab on Saturday.

While the Pentagon has said it is investigating the incident, the New York Times, citing newly released satellite imagery, verified social media posts and geolocated videos, reported on Thursday that American forces were likely responsible for the attack. According to the newspaper, the US military was targeting an adjacent naval base belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iran Rejects Cease-Fire Negotiations, Says Ready for U.S. Ground Invasion

Iran Rejects Cease-Fire Negotiations, Says Ready for U.S. Ground Invasion

ETH

Iran is prepared for a possible ground invasion by U.S. troops, the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday, as the war launched by the U.S. and Israel continues to escalate.

Araghchi told NBC News that Iran is ready to counter American forces after U.S. President Donald Trump refused to rule out the possibility of boots on the ground earlier this week

“We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said. “Because we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”The military campaign, which is ongoing, prompted a wave of retaliatory strikes from Iran across the Middle East, reportedly hitting both U.S. military bases and civilian sites in Gulf states, killing dozens of people, including six U.S. service members.

The Trump Administration has signaled that the military campaign is likely to be more expansive than initially laid out.

Trump told the Daily Mail on Sunday that the campaign could last around four weeks, even as the war appears to be unpopular with most Americans and as foreign citizens stranded in the Middle East scramble to leave the region.

And U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during a Thursday briefing that “the amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically.” FULL REPORT

Five soldiers seriously wounded by Hezbollah rocket as Air Force pounds Beirut

Five soldiers seriously wounded by Hezbollah rocket as Air Force pounds Beirut

Emanuel Fabian

Eight Israeli soldiers were wounded, five of them seriously, in a Hezbollah rocket attack in northern Israel on Friday, the military said.

The rocket struck an army position near the Lebanon border. An alert sounded in the area, though the soldiers did not manage to seek shelter in time, according to a preliminary probe by the Israel Defense Forces.

The troops, who all serve with the Givati Brigade, were taken to a hospital for treatment. Five were listed in serious condition and three were lightly hurt, the army said.

Among those lightly injured by the rocket strike was the son of Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, the minister’s office said.

The Israeli Air Force launched airstrikes in Beirut overnight and throughout Friday, as officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards reportedly fled the Lebanese capital amid Israel’s attacks.

According to the IDF, overnight strikes hit 10 multi-story buildings that were being used by the terror group in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold known as the Dahiyeh.

The buildings, including a drone warehouse and the headquarters of Hezbollah’s executive council, “were intended to be used by Hezbollah to advance and carry out numerous attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.

A wave of strikes in the afternoon in the Dahiyeh struck a headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as several Hezbollah sites.

According to the IDF, the headquarters served the IRGC air force. In addition, the military said it struck three Hezbollah headquarters — of the terror group’s naval force, executive council, and financial division.

The IDF strikes in Beirut were preceded by a mass evacuation order for residents in all four major neighborhoods of the Dahiyeh. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned Friday that the displacement risked a “humanitarian disaster.” The UN said Israel’s blanket evacuation orders raised “serious concern” under international law. Israel says the evacuations are meant to prevent harm to civilians as it targets terror infrastructure.

The IDF also issued evacuation orders in Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon and in the country’s eastern Beqaa Valley.

Hezbollah, for its part, issued its own evacuation warning for Israeli towns near the border with Lebanon on Friday, apparently in a sardonic rejoinder to Israel’s Dahiyeh evacuation order. Israel has said it is not evacuating northern Israeli towns, and instead has launched a ground and air offensive aimed at pushing Hezbollah away from the border.

And unlike the hundreds of thousands who have answered Israel’s call to leave in Lebanon, there is little evidence of mass departures from northern Israel, despite a rise in rocket attacks from Lebanon.

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Friday that the military has killed more than 70 Hezbollah operatives in strikes in Lebanon since Hezbollah joined the fray.

Among those killed in Israel’s strikes in Lebanon since Monday are Iranian officials and senior officers in Iran-backed terror groups, according to the military, Arabic media reports, and the organizations themselves.