Just a year ago, Putin signed a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Tehran. Now the regime — which supplied Russia with killer Shahed drones for its fight in Ukraine — is in danger of being toppled by protesters whom Trump has indicated he could intervene militarily to defend.
Russians have taken notice.
“An entire era is coming to an end,” wrote a pro-war military blogger under the pen name Maxim Kalashnikov on Sunday, reflecting growing criticism of the Russian leadership.
Russian authorities, he argued, had spent too much time trying to create an image that the country was a great power rather than taking steps to ensure it became one. The promise that “‘we can do it again’ has failed,” Kalashnikov concluded.
Journalists friendly to the Iranian regime have reported that Moscow in recent weeks supplied Iran with Russian-made Spartak armored vehicles and attack helicopters, presumably to help fend off protesters, said Nikita Smagin, an expert on Russia-Iran relations and a contributor to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“But, of course, the Iranians have no illusions that if the situation were to become truly critical, Russia would simply step aside, as it did in the case of Bashar al-Assad,” he said, referring to the fall of the Syrian dictator’s regime in 2024 and his subsequent exile to Russia.