And How Exactly This "Meaningful Support" ...

 ... is defined? I follow periodically the so-called Quincy Institute (Responsible Statecraft) publications and can reiterate my point that this Institute is nothing more than a collection of the sinecures and a tribune for credentialed amateurs, such as people "the caliber" of Anatol Lieven or even George Beebe, both of who wouldn't understand a first thing about Russia and warfare, but still continue to write all kinds of nonsense, expected from people with no applicable education and experience. But if Responsible Statecraft publishing on Russia, bar a very few competent pieces by people the scale of Esteemed Ambassador Jack Matlock, is nothing that a jumbled pseudo-academic BS, we have now yet another Ph.D who writes about Russian-Iranian relations. I want to forestall any kind of accusations and state that the extend of my Farsi knowledge is the name of dice in Nard and that I never visited Iran, albeit I guarded the maritime border between USSR and Iran during very interesting (to put it mildly) times. 

So, Ahmad Mahmoudian penned the piece about Russian-Iranian relations in which he, ignoring most of the facts of developing ties between Tehran and Moscow (he needs to pay attention to shipyards in Astrakhan and what is going on there, as one example), concludes that Iran will be sidelined once the SMO concludes. OK, I am sure that this school of thought has the right to exist, but Mahmoudian arrives to this conclusion based, among other things, on this:

Yet, Iran’s newfound influence had clear limits. Russia continued to withhold advanced aircraft, and during Iran’s confrontations with Israel in April and October of 2024, Moscow refrained from offering meaningful support to Tehran. This underscored the constraints of their partnership, while cooperation had deepened, it remained shaped by competing interests and underlying power asymmetries.

My immediate question is how Mr. Mahmoudian knows that Moscow "refrained from offering meaningful support" to Tehran? What does "meaningful" mean in Mr. Mahmoudian's universe. Is Mr. Mahmoudian privy to classified communications between Russian MoD and MoD of Iran? Can he guarantee that Russian ISR have not been working for Iran who successfully repelled Israel's attempt? Or can Mr. Mahmoudian explain to his readers what that is? 

This one is Ghadir Radar station--a second one for Iran. You can see the set here. This radar is the most advanced 1000-km range radar capable of detecting the so called "stealth" targets, ballistic missiles and hypersonic ones. Hm, it doesn't look to me that Russians do not offer "meaningful support" to Iran after all. Moreover, they were doing this well before that start of SMO, which, in accordance to Mr. Mahmoudian, "shaped" Russian-Iranian relations. Hm, strange, what to do with this then, from 2020?

KUBINKA /Moscow Region/, August 24. /TASS/. Russian-made radar Rezonans-NE, which Iran purchased to identify and track stealth aircraft and hypersonic targets, successfully spotted and tracked US F-35 fighters near the country’s borders during an aggravation of tensions at the beginning of 2020 following the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the deputy CEO of the research center Rezonans Alexander Stuchilin told TASS on Monday. At the beginning of 2020 this radar identified US F-35 planes and tracked them," he said on the sidelines of the international military-technical forum Army-2020.

Stuchilin said that he was referring to the "well-known events of the beginning of this year." "The radar’s personnel were transmitting information, including the routes of F-35 flights, in clear, thus confirming that it was reliably tracking the planes. For this reason, the opponent did not commit any irreparable actions that might have caused a big war," Stuchilin said. He remarked that the Rezonans-NE radar had been on round-the-clock combat duty in Iran for several years.

I will not comment on the persistent rumors of Russia's deliveries of Su-35s to Iran. Will wait for the confirmation, but here is my point--this is the XXI century, and this is the time for all kinds of "Ph.Ds" in political pseudo-science to abstain from writing on any things related to military-political matters without the basic understanding of military technology and how it influences operations in all four domains and how this operational impact (effect) is measured. I read for three years a delirium by Anatol Lieven and other "experts" about SMO and Russia. It looks like the same type of "expertise" is being published, yet again, by Quincy Institute which, it seems, is into the business of recycling same credentialed Washington "intellectuals" who wouldn't know shit from shinola. They certainly wouldn't understand what "leakers" are and how to assess them. 

P.S. In other news, Iran produces domestically rather decent AD complexes, many of which are knockoffs (good ones) of Russian ones. They are good enough to defend Iran as the events with successful repelling of Israeli attack demonstrated fully.