![\"INTERACTIVE](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/INTERACTIVE-SHAHED136-drone.png\")
<\/p>\nWhen US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov on Thursday in Manila, on the margins of a summit of Southeast Asian nations, Moscow\u2019s war on Ukraine was officially the top agenda item.<\/p>\n
But the meeting between Rubio and Lavrov was held under the shadow of fresh reports suggesting that Russia might be playing a more active role than it has publicly acknowledged in Iran\u2019s attacks on United States military sites in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
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Reports of Iran targeting sites belonging to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) first emerged in the early days of the US and Israel\u2019s war on Iran. Three days into the war, on March 3, The Washington Post reported that a CIA station in the US embassy in Riyadh had been targeted, according to two people familiar with the matter. On March 6, CNN reported, citing US intelligence sources, that Moscow had been helping Tehran locate US personnel and aircraft in the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Now, more recently, the Reuters news agency on Wednesday reported that Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities, specifically on the embassy in Saudi Arabia, had prompted US intelligence to investigate possible Russian involvement, suggesting that the strikes\u2019 effectiveness and precision could suggest possible evidence of support.<\/p>\n
Nicole Grajewski, an assistant professor at the Centre of International Research at Sciences Po university in Paris, explained that Russian involvement in Iran\u2019s targeting was a \u201crealistic\u201d theory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was kind of what was suspected because a lot of the attacks that Iran did were far more advanced than what they\u2019ve done before,\u201d Grajewski told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran doesn\u2019t have great space-based capability, unlike Russia,\u201d she said. \u201cCompared to Russia, Iran doesn\u2019t have enough military-grade satellites for basic stuff\u2026 it seems likely that they struck some of the deal with the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, she explained that Iran has its own human intelligence-gathering networks that are \u201coften overlooked\u201d when it comes to the targets it selects in the region.<\/p>\n
Russian support for Iran<\/p>\n
Amid wars and sanctions, Moscow and Tehran have deepened their military relations.<\/p>\n
While many analysts have argued that relations between the two countries are less of an alliance and more of a marriage of convenience against the West, Grajewski disagrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey both have kind of viewed themselves as actors that are facing kind of similar threats on the global stage, and their cooperation has really intensified since the war in Ukraine, and even more so recently,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re much more dependent on each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine drew the two sides closer militarily after Tehran provided Moscow with critical weapons, most notably the Shahed drone and the Fateh-110 ballistic missile, to aid in its war efforts.<\/p>\n
Last year, the two sides signed a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, which had promised to increase defence cooperation.<\/p>\n
However, The Moscow Times reported Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko saying in an address to the State Duma at the time that the treaty did not mean the \u201cestablishment of a military alliance with Iran or mutual military assistance\u201d.<\/p>\n
Russia has also allegedly helped Tehran improve the accuracy of its Shahed-136s by supplying the Kometa-M anti-jamming navigation system.<\/p>\n
According to reports in March, debris that was found after an attempted Iranian attack on a British Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Cyprus recovered the Russian system from the wreckage of a Shahed-136 drone.<\/p>\n
Russia rejected a report by The Wall Street Journal that reported on the Kometa-M system on Iranian drones, calling it \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n
Still, Grajewski explained that the US war with Iran serves to benefit Moscow to \u201csome extent\u201d as it diverts attention away from the Ukraine war and has the potential of weakening the US\u2019s global power.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the Russians view this as kind of a broader battle for a global order, and they see this as kind of the real cascade that might lead to American decline,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, they don\u2019t want to see Iran fall, and so that\u2019s always been this kind of delicate balance between having Iran go at it alone against the United States, but also making sure that Iran has enough support to survive and withstand a very difficult moment in their history, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Recent attacks<\/p>\n