They might not want US hawks to obsess over the scandalous optics of Trump 2.0 continuing its talks with Russia while Russia is helping Iran kill US troops, which could manipulate the public into pressuring Trump 2.0 into ending these talks for good.
Andrew Korybko
Putin’s envoy to the US Kirill Dmitriev retweeted Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna’s condemnation of Politico’s latest report
alleging that he conveyed Putin’s proposal for Russia to stop providing
Iran with targeting intel on US assets in exchange for the US no longer
sharing intel with Ukraine. He also added that the report is fake news,
which follows Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing reports of Russian targeting intel and drone training to Iran the same way.
US envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff earlier said that Russia denied these reports and that he took them at their word, while Trump claimed that Russia is only helping Iran “a bit” in response to the US helping Ukraine and then Secretary of War Pete Hegseth downplayed the importance of such support. It was previously assessed here that these reports are believable in spite of Iran not being Russia’s mutual defense ally like friends and foes alike mistakenly claim for the same reason that Trump later speculated.
It’s indeed possible that Russia isn’t providing any military support to Iran even though the latter’s Foreign Minister suggested
that it is, which might have just been a bluff in that scenario, but
it’s difficult to believe that Russia would turn down a chance to give
the US even just a mild taste of its own medicine. In the event that
it’s at least providing targeting intel, then that would mean that the
Kremlin and the White House are both covering this up, thus prompting
the question of why they’d do so.
The answer could be that
they don’t want US hawks to obsess over the scandalous optics of Trump
2.0 continuing its talks with Russia while Russia is helping Iran kill
US troops, which could manipulate the public into pressuring Trump 2.0
into ending these talks for good. To be sure, it’s also scandalous that
Putin remains committed to them despite the US helping Ukrainians kill
Russians (including civilians), but public opinion doesn’t influence
Russian policy whatsoever at all like it sometimes influences US policy.
Returning
to Politico’s report, if Russia really is helping Iran target the US’
regional assets, then Putin might have tasked Dmitriev with conveying
his proposal for ending this aid in exchange for the US ending its own
intelligence aid to Ukraine. Considering that Iran hasn’t killed many US
troops if one takes the Pentagon’s claims at face value, which some
might not but they should also be wary of falling for fake AI videos on
social media, then it’s understandable why the US would have rejected
this.
After all, the US’ intel aid to Ukraine has been
indispensable to both its defensive and offensive operations with
respect to maintaining the slow pace of Russia’s gains and hitting
targets far behind the front line, while Iran has yet to inflict any
proven large-scale damage to the US like sinking one of its ships.
Nevertheless, the lingering possibility that it could still
hypothetically do so hangs as a Damocles’ sword over Trump 2.0, ergo why
Putin might have sincerely thought that he’d agree to this request.
In
any case, the preceding calculations remain speculative since Peskov
and Dmitriev denied that Russia is providing any military aid to Iran,
which would be deeply disappointing for many “Non-Rusisan Pro-Russians”
if true. If this is actually happening and both sides are covering it
up, however, then it would be for pragmatically maintaining their
ongoing talks. Extrapolating from that scenario, their talks might be
further along than most observers thought, but this is only speculation
and can’t be known for sure.