As the G7 summit in France wrapped up, Donald Trump covered a lot of ground in an hour-long press conference, including extending some curious praise to his friend in Moscow.
“I want to thank Vladimir Putin, he was very neutral,” the American president said, referring to the Russian leader’s role in the war in Iran. “They could have made it much more difficult for us.”
Whether Trump realizes this or not, there was a foundational problem with his compliment: Putin wasn’t “neutral” at all.
Just days into the war with Iran, multiple news organizations, including MS NOW, reported that Russia provided Iran with information that could help it strike American targets. One U.S. official told MS NOW point-blank that Russia was “providing intelligence help to Iran.”
It wasn’t long before any doubts about the accuracy of the reporting evaporated. Iranian officials publicly confirmed Russia’s “military cooperation”; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz acknowledged Russia’s wartime “strategic partnership” with Iran; and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said matter-of-factly that Russia was “providing intelligence to Iran to better attack and kill American troops.”
The Wall Street Journal soon after advanced the broader story, reporting that Russia expanded its intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Iran, “providing satellite imagery and improved drone technology to aid Tehran’s targeting of U.S. forces in the region.”
In theory, this should have been the sort of news that sent shockwaves through Washington. In the middle of an ongoing and deadly hot war in the Middle East, the administration had reason to believe one U.S. adversary (Russia) was helping another U.S. adversary (Iran) facilitate attacks against us.
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA and Pentagon official, said during a Senate hearing, “If Russia is helping to kill U.S. forces, we have crossed a Rubicon. We are in another moment. We have to take decisive action on that.”
But in practice, there were no shockwaves. Trump and his team chose not to care.
The initial reaction from the American president and his team to the original allegations was to express total indifference. This was followed by news that the Republican administration agreed effectively to reward Putin’s regime by easing oil sanctions on the country.
All the while, top members of Team Trump publicly vouched for Russia’s trustworthiness and echoed Kremlin talking points.