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Notes -
US/Israel/Iran/Russia.
It seems quite conspicuous how on one hand US engagement with the Israel/Iran war, widely seen as something that is very personal for Trump for whatever reason, coincides with a much-lamented acceleration of the softening of his stance on Russia; and on the other hand Russia is also conspicuously sitting on the fence regarding the conflict, despite their previous military collaboration with Iran and it being ostensibly natural for them to take this opportunity to set another trap for the Western coalition.
Do you figure it could be the case that Trump decided to buy Putin's neutrality on the matter by offering him at least a period of US stonewalling on further pro-Ukraine action? The null hypothesis I can think of is that Putin just independently appreciates that Israel has been reticent to support Ukraine directly so far, while Trump's rapprochement with Russia is just a natural continuation of his preexisting trajectory and not particularly connected to Iran.
Russia has no way of helping Iran. If this was in 3 years time and the war in Ukraine has ended with massive Russian victory and they couldn't turn off their military industrial complex for fear of the holy mother of depressions then I could see them sending shitload of material for cold hard cash. The only party that could help Iran now is China. But they still test their toys in Ukraine. And shipping now is hard. It is obvious that Iran has zero opsec. So they cannot arrange securely receiving anything even if someone was willing to send it to them.
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Russian and Iranian cooperation seems more just to counter the western empire's expansion collaborate to avoid sanctions and so on. They share some military tech and iirc Russian trade with India is through Iran. Other than that economically they are less interdependent, and if the war went bad and Iran closed the strait of Hormuz and hit Saudi Arabia's oil fields it would put Russia in a spot to make a pretty huge profit and a lot of pressure for the west to back off sanctions to stabilize their economy. This threat is ironically probably a more effective weapon against the west than a nuke.
I think China would be far more likely to come to their aid. They are a huge energy importer and Iran is crucial to their overland trade routes. They recently committed to a half trillion dollar infrastructure project in Iran, etc. Already heard of a couple Chinese warships entering their waters and some cargo planes flying in and out. Guess it will depend on how things escalate.
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What kind of trap could they be setting? They have no military resources deployed there, and whatever they could ship is at complete mercy of Israel air force now that they have full aerial superiority. Nobody is trying to invade Iran on land, so Russia's favorite strategy of sending 10x people in and having 5x killed but still coming ahead on the numbers is pointless there. Not to mention even the most hardened Russian patriot would find confusing why exactly he must go and get killed by Israel in Iran and how it is vital for Mother Russia. Russia would gladly sell Iran any military equipment they could, but the things they are better at than Iran - e.g. air defense systems - are pretty useless by now, as existing ones have been destroyed and new ones are hard to deploy in any useful way in the middle of the war where the enemy owns the air.
On the other hand, they have some very vulnerable projects - like Busher reactor - which are technically not military, but given how Iran already hit many civilian targets in Israel, the case can easily be made for it to be infrastructure and thus fair game. So far, Russia made the opposite deal with Israel - we stay out of it and limit ourselves to blowing hot air, and you don't bomb the shit that makes us money. Since Busher, as far as I know, has little military value, Israel is fine with leaving it alone for now.
On the third hand, is Iran manages to really piss of Israel and it will authorize taking out Iran's oil facilities, guess who would be the only supplier of cheap oil to China. And who would benefit from the oil and gas prices inevitably raising.
So Russia is being very smart right now and doing exactly what is their best interest is - talking big game (in case ayatollahs pull through and there would be business to be done with them in the future) while not doing anything that would cause them to bear any costs. Trump has nothing to do with it - that kind of situation existed long before him, Russia had always been reluctant to mess with Israel directly, and Israel had always been willing to take Russia's interests into account as much as it is possible without hurting the main goals.
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Highly unlikely to me there's any relevance from Ukraine to either side's approach. Trump was pro-Israel and anti-Ukraine before any of these conflicts erupted, and Russia's likely just too strained to contribute much, especially with how broadly unpopular Iran is.
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