Russia has long exchanged weapons with Iran and is likely offering satellite support, but lacks the will to do much more.
“A bit” is what United States President Donald Trump thinks about the scale of Russia’s military aid to Iran, reports Al Jazeera.
Moscow “might be helping them a bit”, he told Fox News on March 13.
A day later, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated laconically that Moscow’s military cooperation with Tehran was “good”.
His words seemed to confirm earlier media reports that Russia is providing Iran with satellite and intelligence data on the locations of US warships and aircraft.
It may not sound like much, given the superiority of Western military satellites and Russia’s battlefield losses and communication problems after Elon Musk’s SpaceX company switched off smuggled Starlink satellite Internet terminals.
But data on US military assets Iran is receiving most likely comes from Liana, Moscow’s only fully functional system of spy satellites, according to an expert on Russia’s space programme and military.
“The [Liana] system has been created to spy on US carrier strike groups and other navy forces and for identifying them as targets,” Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Russia also played a key role in the development of Iran’s space programme and its key satellite, the Khayyam.
Launched in 2022 from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome, the 650kg (1,430 pound) satellite orbits the Earth at 500 kilometres (310 miles) and has a resolution of one metre (3.3 feet).
Moscow “can, in theory, receive and process data from Iran’s optical imaging satellite and share data from its own several satellites”, Luzin said.
On Wednesday, Tehran claimed to have struck the Abraham Lincoln carrier with multiple cruise and ballistic missiles, but the Pentagon called the claim “pure fiction”.
On Sunday, Iranian media claimed that a “massive blaze” was caused by a strike on a US destroyer refuelling in the Indian Ocean.
Washington did not comment on that strike.
Russia has, for decades, supplied weaponry to Iran, including advanced air defence systems, trainer and fighter jets, helicopters, armoured vehicles and sniper rifles, worth billions of dollars.
Since Washington and Tel Aviv began their strikes on 28 February, Russia has continued aiding Iran with “intelligence, data, experts and components” for weaponry, Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces, told Al Jazeera.
While Moscow and Tehran loudly proclaim their strategic partnership, they do not have a mutual defence clause, and Moscow has not intervened in the conflict directly.
But the arms supplies have been mutual. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Tehran has provided Moscow with ammunition and artillery shells, firearms and short-range ballistic missiles, helmets and flak jackets.
However, if Iran is suffering a shortage of drones – as some analysts believe it is – that would render the use of Russian tactics, as well as Russia-supplied satellite data useless, experts say.
“Russia does supply data, it’s obvious, the data helps Iran, but not much,” Nikita Smagin, a Russian expert who has written extensively on ties between Moscow and Tehran, told Al Jazeera.
After four days of intensive strikes using up to 250 drones a day in early March, Iran has been launching only up to 50 drones a day, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University.
“Iran ran out of steam really fast,” he told Al Jazeera.
