Iran questions alliance with Russia, alleges Moscow shared air defense data with Israel
In an interview with the Synergyir channel, Seyed Mohammad Sadr, a member of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, claimed that during the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel in June, Russia passed Israel intelligence on the locations of Iranian air defense systems.
Sadr said the events showed that “a strategic alliance with Moscow is useless.” “Russia merely said it did not approve of Israel’s attack on Iran, but in practice it helped,” he added.
He also pointed to Moscow’s cooperation with other countries: “Turkey is a NATO member. What is NATO? It is against Russia. Russia agreed to sell Turkey the S-400. This is not the strategic partnership we talked about for years.”
Sadr stressed that ties between Moscow and Tehran should continue, but “Russia cannot be trusted.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously said Moscow’s readiness to provide Iran with military assistance in a conflict with Israel would depend on an official request from Tehran, but he did not say whether Russia was prepared to supply air defense systems such as the S-300 or S-400.
Notably, on January 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in Moscow, intended to strengthen bilateral ties and military cooperation.
At the same time, Russia sold advanced S-400 air-defense systems to Turkey, a NATO member, while refraining from supplying those systems to Tehran and dragging its feet on Su-35 fighter jets.
“Turkey is a NATO member, an organization that openly opposes Russia. This has nothing to do with the strategic partnership we’ve talked about for so long,” the Iranian official said.
Separately, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, called Russia’s Vladimir Putin “a man with a thousand faces.