Editor's Note: The story was updated on Tuesday to include a reply from the White House.

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is benefiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though Putin in theory could and should do much more to protect his Iranian allies.

“Holding Moscow back are the Kremlin’s ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration to end the war in Ukraine,” wrote Foreign Affairs' Alexander Gabuev, Nicole Grajewski, Sergey Vakulenko on Monday. “The Russian leadership hopes to reap benefits from this performative process, at least in terms of limiting U.S. support for Ukraine and slowing the rollout of new sanctions targeting Russia.”

They added, “Under these circumstances, the Kremlin can’t afford to provide stronger, more visible support for Iran.”

This is not to say that Russia’s seeming impotence in the face of a US invasion of its ally is entirely due to Putin's attempts to manipulate Trump. Instead it is “in keeping with a familiar pattern: when Russia’s friends are in need, Moscow issues strongly worded statements and does little else.” They listed as examples Russia’s refusal to intervene in the Armenia-Azerbaijan war of 2023, its refusal to assist Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against rebels in 2024 and its refusal to interfere when the US abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2025. On each occasion, an ostensible Russian ally was left to hang out to dry.

At the same time, “the current war in Iran has unintended consequences that benefit Russia. As the war drags on, the price of energy will likely continue to rise, which will help Moscow earn additional revenue and address a ballooning budget deficit resulting from its war in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs wrote. In terms of its relationship with the United States, “the war in Iran is yet another distraction for the United States, diverting precious resources and bandwidth that Washington might otherwise have allocated to its European partners and Ukraine. Russia may be unable to protect its partners, but it is still skillful in adapting to strategic failures and reaping important tactical gains from them.”

Additionally, even though Russia is not providing Iran with direct military assistance that could literally prove life-saving, it may be offering secretive assistance in other ways that fly under the radar of the US and do not in other ways disrupt Putin’s other geopolitical goals.

“To be sure, Russia may well be providing assistance that is harder to observe than a weapons shipment, such as offering access to space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that could improve Iranian targeting,” Foreign Affairs wrote. “Such assistance leaves fewer visible traces than transfers of aircraft or missile batteries, which makes it harder to track and easier to deny, but it is still consequential. Some U.S. administration officials have concluded that Moscow is clandestinely engaged in these activities, as The Washington Post recently reported.”

They added, “The exact scale and depth of this effort is difficult to estimate at this point, but its impact surely pales in comparison to the multiyear, U.S.-led intelligence assistance program that enabled Ukrainian armed forces to kill thousands of Russian soldiers since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.”

In response to the Foreign Affairs article, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told AlterNet that “the American people and our allies will be the winners when the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are achieved. President Trump is ensuring that the world is safe again from Iranian terror, which will no longer be allowed to disrupt the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.”

This is not the only wrinkle in the longtime relationship between Trump and Putin. Earlier in March, Reuters reported “when President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, some Russian hardliners were cautiously optimistic, hoping his unpredictability and transactional nature might benefit Moscow on Ukraine. But his attack on Iran means many now see him as a growing threat to Russia itself and are questioning if Trump is the pragmatic, potentially pro-Moscow strongman ready to deal in realpolitik that they thought he was.”

Indeed, nationalist oligarch and Kremlin insider Konstantin Malofeyev told Reuters that “the unprincipled United States is a threat to the entire world. This is the United States we are trying to negotiate with regarding Ukraine. Yes, it wants a weak Europe. But it also wants a weak Russia."

Similarly, The Atlantic published a February article in which senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Thomas Graham and former Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal Allan Cullison wrote that with Trump “dismantling the order that Putin had so long abhorred,” he believed he would benefit. “Putin had thought he could rise to the top of such a system, in which raw economic and military might outweigh diplomacy and alliances. But he was mistaken: The norms and institutions of the post-War order actually masked Russia's vulnerabilities. Putin has gotten the world he wished for — and it's threatening to crush him."

Donald Trump suddenly popped on TV screens this week, giving his most extensive remarks on the war in Iran and taking questions from the press.

Trump had previously given no public speech to the American people upon the initiation of this war—unlike every American president taking the country to war. His communication to the American public was mostly in the form of videos or speaking by phone to select reporters, offering wildly shifting rationales for the war and its goals.

Then, however, he finally came before the White House press corps and repeated what he’d said earlier in the day to CBS, that the war is “very complete.” But he also said it would go on, even though it would end “soon,” and that Pete Hegseth, who earlier said the war is “just the beginning,” is correct, even though Trump said that it’s “complete.”

What?

He’s trying to have it all ways in a war that had no planning or an endgame.

The crazy presser perhaps is explained by two things that happened in the hours before it: Trump spoke at length to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump saw oil prices surge to $120 a barrel on Sunday, tanking markets around the world and in the US on Monday morning.

Let’s take the latter first. We learned from the tariff upheaval that Trump cannot stomach the markets crashing and particularly the bond market starting to teeter. It’s the only thing that stops him. Corporate America and his billionaire friends and GOP donors wind up shrieking. And average Americans—in this case looking at the price of gasoline—become very attuned to the economy and high prices.

Trump’s earlier statement in the day to CBS, while the markets were open, that the war is “very complete” was meant to calm the markets. ‘I think the war is very complete, pretty much,’ Trump told CBS. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force ... Wrapping up is all in my mind.”

And the intended effect worked. The price of oil came down and had been from earlier when Trump promised insurance and military escorts for companies. None of that may actually happen. It’s risky for American military vessels to escort ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which has essentially been brought to a standstill, stranding 20% of the world’s oil supply. But the market operates on hope and fear.

Trump knows that. The real economy operates on facts—real data as well as on experiences on the ground by Americans in their jobs and in their consumer spending—but the market operates on hope and fear until that real economy catches up. The market can be temporarily lifted, and Trump lent it a helping hand.

But later, in the presser, after the markets had closed, Trump gave much more mixed signals—The New York Times called it a “zigzag”—saying the war may go on for a while. He even responded to a question about Hegseth saying it’s “just the beginning” by saying that “both” could be true.

Clearly, Trump still wanted to convey that he had massive leverage over Iran, and that the bombing will continue—which it has today. That’s because, in essence, this was all a capitulation to the Iranian regime, which knew the US wouldn’t have the stomach to go on for long.

Trump had only on Friday called for an “unconditional surrender” from Iran and said he’d need a say in who would be its leader, promoting his most extensive thoughts on regime change yet. And Trump absolutely rejected the idea that the son of the former Supreme Leader could be the new Supreme Leader.

But Iran indeed installed as Supreme Leader the son of 86-year-old Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S. strike along with a few dozen other leaders, some of whom were viewed as more moderate by U.S. intelligence and as leaders with whom the U.S. could work. As national security analyst Joe Cirincione, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, told me on my SiriusXM program yesterday, that strike was a strategic blunder—spurred on by Israel—as the U.S. now had no top leaders with whom it could negotiate.

The son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is much more hardline than his father and is only 56 years old. So Trump killed the old man who could likely have been replaced when he died by one among several moderates—all of whom Trump also killed—and now the hardline, young son will be there for a long time.

Iran’s regime defied Trump’s demand—there would be no surrender—and they chose their more extreme leader. And then the markets tanked as oil was cut off. And Trump caved.

So Trump’s bluster at the presser yesterday was his way of trying to make Iran’s brutal government feel afraid of him. But why should they feel afraid? He’d, after all, just melted away. Trump also completely sidestepped a question from a reporter about how the Iranian people—the vast majority of whom support democracy—could feel betrayed by him? Trump had promised them he’d save them, only to now cave and hand them over to a new ayatollah.

Trump’s move to declare victory wasn’t just a response to the market and the billionaire overlords. He’d had a long conversation with Putin earlier in the day as well. We learned in recent days that Putin was continuing to supply Iran with intelligence, which is outrageous since Iran was targeting American soldiers using intelligence from Russia. And yet, both Trump and Hegseth dismissed that, as usual tiptoeing around Putin. And now Trump had a long conversation with Putin.

The conservation, which Trump said was a “good” one, is pretty much shrouded in mystery. But we can put together how it went. Putin had earlier said that the attack would trigger an oil crisis and said oil transport would stop in the Strait of Hormuz. He was, of course, right.

Putin also said that Russia—whose economy is collapsing under sanctions but which is the second-largest oil exporter in the world and has the biggest reserve of natural gas—was happy to once again sell Europe its oil and gas. Europe had stopped importing Russian energy after the Ukraine invasion began.

Putin wanted a long-term deal again. And Trump, we’ve learned, is now considering pulling back on oil sanctions against Russia. He’d already announced a few days ago that he was allowing India to buy oil from Russia, dropping the threatened tariffs if India bought Russian oil, because of the shortage of oil coming from the Gulf.

“We’re also waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices,” Trump said at the presser yesterday. “So we have sanctions on some countries. We’re going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out.”

So Trump capitulated not only to Iran but to Russia.

Putin now had more leverage on Trump, able to help Trump out in the oil crisis he started. Putin is getting Trump to actually help sell Russian oil, and lift Putin’s devastated economy. The invasion of Ukraine be damned.

Trump may be trying to claim the U.S. has won, but the only winners so far are Putin and, to the extent that they survive even if their military capability is damaged for now, the Iranian regime.

The Iranian people are still living under a horrific, murderous theocracy. Thousands have been killed in Iran and the region, including hundreds of Iranian children killed in a school that analysts have determined was caused by an American Tomahawk missile. Seven American service members lost their lives. And the American people are paying higher gas prices, as the oil shock will last a while.

In March, Scottish journalist Andrew Neil — known for being a staunch conservative — expressed his frustration with U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy when he lamented, "I think, in some ways, he regards (Russian President Vladimir) Putin as more of an ally than he regards the United Kingdom or any of his European NATO allies."

Neil complained, "He slapped tariffs on all of his allies. He didn't put tariffs on Russia. And he's helped to bail out Russia now with what he's done on the price of oil."

Neil isn't the only one who views Trump as more favorable to Putin than to longtime North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies of the United States. MS NOW host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, lamented, during an April 7 rant, that "the Republicans I grew up with" who "believed in a strong west" have "vanished" and been replaced by admirers of Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

In an essay/opinion column published on April 7, the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall laments that Trump's fondness for Putin hasn't gone away.

"Events over two days last month — Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7 — demonstrated President Trump's willingness to sacrifice American interests in subservience to President Vladimir Putin of Russia," Edsall argues. "On that Friday, the Washington Post reporters Noah Robertson, Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel revealed that 'Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East.' The next day, Trump attended the transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware of the flag-draped coffins of six U.S. members of the Army Reserve killed by a kamikaze drone strike at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait. An inevitable, but unanswerable, question: Was the drone strike guided by information Russia provided to Iran?"

Edsall notes that the Trump White House staff "followed orders to tow Trump's line" on Putin and Iran.

"His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the Russia-Iran intelligence sharing 'is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran,'" Edsall explains. "She declined to say whether Trump has discussed the issue with Putin or whether the administration would pursue repercussions…. Trump's deference not just to Putin' but to other authoritarian leaders' has repeatedly and profoundly corrupted American foreign policy."

In an interview, Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, told Edsall, "Trump does seem attracted to Putin as a strongman ruler. He seems more comfortable with — and gives more credence to — Putin than with leaders of America's democratic allies or with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine."

Former National Security Council (NSC) official Fiona Hill is also frustrated by Trump's affinity for Putin.

Hill recently told the BBC, "Well, I think the first thing to disavow everybody of is the idea that there is a relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. I think that's part of the problem, because Trump would like a relationship with Putin, and that's exactly why he doesn't criticize him. It's a kind of unrequited love of some description. You know, everyone keeps talking about bromance. He hasn't even got there. And you know, Putin is very good at playing hard to get, incredibly hard to get. And this drives Trump mad, because he never gets what he wants off Putin, which is really adulation, respect."

Over the years, Vladimir Putin has moved from the far left to the far right. Putin was a KGB agent in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, but he later rejected communism and embraced an authoritarian form of crony capitalism as president of the Russia Federation.

Putin, now 73, is seeking to expand the Russia Federation with the invasion of Ukraine, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his troops have vigorously fought back against. But in his February 13 column for the Washington Post, Never Trump conservative George Will lays out some reasons why Putin is facing a "grim future" politically.

"As the fifth year of Russia's war to subdue Ukraine approaches, Putin has learned that the past is easier to control than the present," the 84-year-old Will explains. "He has a grim future if the United States and Europe press their advantages. A much-diminished Russia occupies just 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that Kyiv controlled four Februarys ago. Europe, which has not yet even completely weaned itself from Russian energy, is at least accustoming itself to the vocabulary of military seriousness."

Will notes that Putin has little support in the European Union (EU) beyond Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"Putin's only sympathizer in the European Union, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, might now have firmer support among American authoritarians ('national conservatives') than among Hungarians," the conservative columnist writes. "Putin's 'special military operation' in Ukraine (calling it a war can mean imprisonment) has lasted longer than Russia's involvement in World War II. By now, Putin has surely defined success down: a negotiated armistice that provides Ukraine with security 'guarantees' even more gossamer than those of the infamous 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances…. In the first half of 2025, the most stolen item was the Russian Constitution, which guarantees free speech and forbids censorship."

Will adds, "Hence, a Russian joke: 'We read (George) Orwell for his reflection of reality, and the constitution as a beautiful utopia.' Negotiate accordingly."

During former U.S. President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, he warned that if Donald Trump became president again, it would threaten the wellbeing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And during his speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney lamented that under Trump, there has been a "rupture" in relations between the United States and its longtime NATO allies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a longtime critic of NATO and the North America/Europe alliance it represents. And Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told Politico that U.S./Russia relations reached "an unprecedented historic low" during Biden's presidency.

In an article published by The Atlantic on February 13, Thomas Graham (a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) and Alan Cullison (a former Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal) noted that Putin got what he wanted: a Trump victory in the United States' 2024 presidential election, followed by weakening of U.S./Europe relations in 2025 and 2026. But they emphasize that this shift is exposing Putin's weaknesses.

"For decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin railed against the world that the United States built after the Cold War," Graham and Cullison explain. "In his account, an international order run by a single power would hinder Russia and produce needless conflict, especially when that power was as self-serving and duplicitous as America. Now, Donald Trump is dismantling the order that Putin had so long abhorred, and a new multipolar world is emerging in its place. Putin had thought he could rise to the top of such a system, in which raw economic and military might outweigh diplomacy and alliances. But he was mistaken: The norms and institutions of the post-War order actually masked Russia's vulnerabilities. Putin has gotten the world he wished for — and it's threatening to crush him."

Graham and Cullison note that Putin "touted a wide-ranging strategic partnership with China" that has "fallen short of his expectations."

"Trump's disdain for international alliances and norms has also begun to reshape Europe in a way that may exacerbate Russia's weakness," the foreign policy specialists note. "As U.S. security assurances wane, European countries are developing their hard-power capabilities. Germany has committed 100 billion euros to modernize its military, and Poland is building up its armed forces with a goal of amassing 300,000 troops. Putin has long wanted to split the U.S. and Europe. But he might soon find that the continent — which collectively dwarfs Russia in population and wealth — poses a significant challenge even if it doesn't belong to a U.S.-dominated alliance."

Graham and Cullison continue, "Shortly before becoming president in 2000, Putin issued a manifesto explaining how Russia could keep from falling into the second or third rank of world powers. He insisted that America's global leadership was holding Moscow back. In reality, he didn't know how good he had it."

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin ahead of a scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Bloomberg reports.

Trump will meet face-to-face with Zelensky Sunday afternoon in Florida. Sunday morning, according to Trump, he had a “good and very productive” phone call with the Russian leader. “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the Trump-Putin call, according to the Interfax news service,” Bloomberg reports.

“Trump has ramped up pressure on Ukraine to make concessions and dangled promises of economic cooperation at Russia,” according to Bloomberg. “While Zelensky has repeatedly declared his readiness for a ceasefire to allow space for peace negotiations, Putin has refused Trump’s calls for a truce without first having reached agreement on a deal.”

NewsNation editor Kevin Bohn reports “after Trump and Zelensky finish their one on one meeting, both leaders will call European leaders to brief them.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday called Europe “the main obstacle to peace," Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, "Russia spent the weekend bombarding Ukraine, pounding Kyiv with hundreds of drones and missiles."

During the final months of his life, the late conservative Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) wasn't shy about attacking U.S. President Donald Trump over his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. McCain viewed Putin as a dangerous authoritarian and believed that Trump was allowing himself to be manipulated by the former KGB agent.

Rob Dannenberg, former chiefs of operations for the CIA Counterterrorism Center and an ex-CIA station chief in Moscow, during the 1990s, has similar views.

In an interview with the UK-based iPaper published on New Year's Day 2026, Dannenberg emphasized that Putin is great at identifying one's weaknesses and was trained to be a master of manipulation.

Dannenberg told the iPaper, "Those of us who served in Moscow understood Putin maybe a little bit better early on than others did…. I dealt with the KGB my entire life. I understand how this guy thinks."

Trump's ego, Dannenberg argues, is a vulnerability that Putin knows how to exploit —and Trump, the CIA veteran fears, is "incredibly naïve" where the Russian president is concerned.

Danneberg told the iPaper, "Putin looks at Trump and sees a weak guy, vain, with huge ego…. He's being manipulated in the way that a good case officer like Putin would manipulate this guy. He's not monogamous, he's greedy, he's fascinated by gold — all these are things that, if I were a case officer, I would be leveraging to get this guy to do what I want him to do. When that happens to align with Trump's ambition to get a Nobel Peace Prize, so much the easier, right? You're pushing on an open door."

Read the iPaper's full interview with Rob Dannenberg at this link.