Donald Trump keeps America’s friends close but has also kept its Russian enemies in an embarrassing embrace.
However, his passion for Vladimir Putin is being tested as his envoys clamber into bed with Iran’s envoys, welcoming Tehran’s foreign minister in St Petersburg on Monday. Like the victim of a coercive relationship, Trump has seemingly gone out of his way to forgive the infidelity of Russia’s president.
Asked about Moscow’s supply of intelligence to Iran that has been used to kill American personnel over the last two months, he replied: “I don’t know, look, they can give all the information that they want but people they’re sending to are overwhelmed. Russia would be overwhelmed too. Anybody would be overwhelmed.”
Speaking as American military bases were under attack from Iranian drones and missiles, the US president shrugged off Russia’s help to Iran by saying, “They’d say we do it against them. Wouldn’t they say that we do it against them?”
Such indifference to military collaboration between Iran and Russia at a time of war is staggering.
But it is not surprising. And since then, Trump has continued to remain silent on Russia’s close cooperation in the production and development of missile technology with Iran.
He’s not asked the Russians to step back from their continued involvement in Iran’s development of nuclear power – Russian experts are still on the ground at the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran.
The US president has also given Russia financial headroom amid international sanctions on its exports of fossil fuels, by lifting some US restrictions on Moscow’s oil exports.
And on 14 April, his vice president JD Vance described his “proudest moment” of the presidency so far as the decision to cut military aid to Ukraine – a nation that Russia invaded but has been under pressure from Trump and his officials to succumb to Putin’s demands as part of a “peace process” that has been described by many European governments as a recipe for Kyiv’s capitulation to the Kremlin.
But now Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Russia to seek more support for its war against America. This is Trump’s opportunity to send at least a minor signal to his friends in Moscow that he’s publicly embarrassed by the flirtation.
Iran’s ambassador to Moscow has said that it’s much more than a long look across the negotiating table or side eyes over canapes at a diplomatic convention.
No. This, he says, is a full-blown relationship.
Kazem Jalali said in a post on X that Mr Araghchi would meet Putin “in continuation of the diplomatic jihad to advance the country’s interests and amid external threats”.
“Iran and Russia are present in a united front in the campaign of the world’s totalitarian forces against independent and justice-seeking countries, as well as countries that seek a world free from unilateralism and Western domination,” Jalali said.
A “united front” against America.
Trump’s response?
“If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines,” he trilled on The Sunday Briefing on Fox News.
But the Russian support to Iran is real. Moscow has transferred or agreed to transfer advanced air‑defence systems, including variants of the S‑300 long-range surface-to-air missile systems to Tehran. Its excerpts have provided advice on improved accuracy of missiles and how to evade American defences. Russia has also been working with Iran on space launch and satellite technology.
The two nations also collaborate on developing live battlefield surveillance technology, which could be used to kill Americans.
Rather than try to stop this, Trump has turned on America’s Nato allies who have not joined his attacks on Iran alongside Israel, because it is an illegal war of aggression and choice – not an act of self-defence. His administration, which believes it owns the alliance of 31 other member states, is considering expelling Spain and suggested that the Falklands won’t get Nato protection.
Spain cannot be expelled by the US. The only attack on a Nato member by a foreign state has been by Argentina when it invaded the Falklands in 1982. The US gave almost no help to the UK then, and London did not invoke the mutual defence agreement between Nato members.
The US did that on 9/11 – and Nato members came to Washington’s aid.
The only beneficiary of divisions inside Nato is Putin. The US will suffer long-term as a consequence of it. Yet Trump has delivered just that.
Only Tehran and Moscow gain from their close relationship. The US will suffer from their long embrace. The US will suffer as a long-term consequence of that, too.
Yet Trump chooses to ignore it or, for reasons that remain obscure and creepy, is powerless to stop it.
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