Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, committing their countries to oppose interference by third parties in each other’s internal and external affairs. Moscow and Tehran celebrated the treaty as the culmination of growing ties between the two regimes.

Yet when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran in late February—the second in just eight months, following last summer’s 12-day war—Russia mostly stood idly by. Putin called the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law,” and Russia’s foreign ministry called for “immediate de-escalation, cessation of hostilities, and resumption of political and diplomatic processes,” but neither statement mentioned U.S. President Donald Trump or raised the possibility of Russia coming to Iran’s defense.

Moscow may have remained true to the letter of the treaty, which doesn’t include a mutual defense clause, but it didn’t do much of substance to aid a key partner in the Middle East and an important accomplice in Putin’s war against Ukraine. The Washington Post and CNN have reported that Russia may have helped Iran with targeting data and advanced drone tactics, but such limited assistance is not likely to make a meaningful difference.

The Kremlin’s impotence in Iran is in keeping with a familiar pattern: when Russia’s friends are in need, Moscow issues strongly worded statements and does little else. In late 2023, Russia failed to intervene in a brief war between its treaty ally, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, allowing Baku to reclaim control over its province of Nagorno-Karabakh. A year later, Moscow let rebel forces topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Within the past year, the United States (along with Israel) bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, military bases, and missile factories; killed high-ranking Iranian officials, military commanders, and nuclear scientists; and abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Moscow’s key partner in Latin America, with virtually no Russian interference. All these cases lay bare the limitations of Russia’s power to shape outcomes around the world.

And yet the current war in Iran has unintended consequences that benefit Russia. As the war drags on, the price of energy will likely continue to rise, which will help Moscow earn additional revenue and address a ballooning budget deficit resulting from its war in Ukraine. On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that in an effort to slow climbing prices, it was temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil already at sea. Meanwhile, China, concerned about the long-term stability of energy supplies from the Middle East, may discover an even greater need for Russian oil and gas. And, of course, the war in Iran is yet another distraction for the United States, diverting precious resources and bandwidth that Washington might otherwise have allocated to its European partners and Ukraine. Russia may be unable to protect its partners, but it is still skillful in adapting to strategic failures and reaping important tactical gains from them.

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow and Tehran saw mutual advantage in developing a partnership. For several hundred years until that point, they were mainly rivals, vying for territory in the Caucasus region and around the Caspian Sea. But in the early 1990s, Moscow sought to sell its surplus Soviet-era defense and civilian nuclear technologies, and Iran, devastated by its war with Iraq and isolated by Western sanctions, proved a ready buyer.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Russia delivered systems that remain core components of Iran’s military inventory: MiG-29 fighters, Su-24 strike aircraft, Kilo-class diesel submarines, T-72 tanks, and S-200 air defense systems. Eventually, Russia sent Tor-M1 short-range air defense batteries and the S-300 long-range........

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