Trump Puts Putin in an Iran Dilemma

Following the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in a difficult position. An old ideological and geopolitical ally has been killed with the full support of another anticipated ideological and geopolitical partner: U.S. President Donald Trump.

Moscow was hardly thrilled at the beginning of this year, when U.S. forces captured and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but Putin and the Kremlin refrained from harsh criticism at the time. In part, this was because of Washington’s framing of the attack in terms of the Trump doctrine: The Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States. Seen from the Kremlin, Trump’s actions in Latin America legitimize its own claim of a sphere of influence in Ukraine, Europe, and beyond. And after all, capture and arrest fall short of assassination.

The events in Iran, however, are taking place in what Russia considers its hemisphere and, to some extent, its sphere of influence—not only geographically, but because Iran is a member of the Russia- and China-led BRICS. This time, accordingly, there was no restraint on condemning the killing. In a message sent to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Putin said that the assassination of Khamenei and members of his family had been “committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.”

Crucially, however, the message published on the Kremlin website was phrased in a way that avoided making direct accusations against Trump and the United States. Putin may flaunt his strength and play the role of a strongman who does what he likes, but in reality, he cannot even afford to verbally attack a U.S. president even as that president is destroying Putin’s allies.

Twice since the beginning of the year, Putin has found himself in a difficult position before his allies and the global south, on whose behalf Russia presumes to speak. He had bet on Trump being a different kind of U.S. leader and invested serious hopes in rapprochement with Washington, not least because of the Trump administration’s friendly neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war and negotiations. It will not be easy for Putin to exit his special relations with Trump without jeopardizing the latter’s helpful stance toward Moscow. Whereas the Russian foreign ministry issued a classic anti-U.S. statement that struck some of the old Soviet anti-imperialist notes, the Kremlin remained silent on the perpetrators of the attack.

Criticism of the United States has effectively been delegated to the foreign ministry and the Russian state media, while the Kremlin works on building its special relationship to Trump and his close associates, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner and golf partner-cum-negotiator Steve Witkoff. These silences show Putin as a weak strongman—a leader who prides himself on unconstrained strength but who cannot in reality afford to offend, even verbally, a U.S. president destroying his allies.

For the Kremlin, showing too much support for Iran would be to openly side with Trump’s enemies, thereby risking incurring his wrath and becoming a party in a conflict against the United States. It would torpedo Washington’s valuable friendly neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war and any chance of the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Confrontation is clearly not the Kremlin’s chosen strategy for dealing with Trump. It’s certainly not in Moscow’s interests to push Trump toward the widespread view among U.S. politicians that lumps Putin and Khamenei together.

Obviously, Putin does care about what is happening in Iran. The violent death of a head of state has always been a topic of obsession for Putin. The killing of deposed Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011 became a turning point in Russian policy and one of the key justifications for Russia’s intensified anti-Western course.

The killing of a leader in office is an unpleasant reminder that such a thing is possible—that the leader and his status may be sacralized at home and recognized abroad, only for someone to come along for whom that means nothing. A single bomb in a single second reduces the sacred figure to an ordinary mortal.

In Putin’s worldview, it is permissible to kill traitors and opposition figures, but the head even of an enemy state—like the head of an enemy clan in rival mafia groups—is to some extent protected by even the simple fact of contact between the bosses. None of this, of course, applies to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has survived multiple Russian assassination attempts. That’s because Putin does not accept the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign country separate from Russia, which, in the Kremlin’s eyes, makes Zelensky just a traitor to be eliminated.

Since Qaddafi’s death, Putin has repeatedly said that the most grievous part was that it was allowed and approved by the same people who had previously shaken the Libyan leader’s hand.

The Russian foreign ministry’s statement on developments in Iran complained specifically that “the attacks are being carried out once again under the guise of a resumed negotiation process.” That is an allusion to Venezuela, where Maduro’s seizure was also preceded by negotiations between him and Trump personally and between the administrations.

If top-level negotiations are no obstacle to a leader’s removal—and the shift from one to the other can take place in an instant—what does that mean for Putin if the outcome of negotiations over Ukraine do not satisfy Trump?

This does not mean the Kremlin directly projects the Iranian situation onto itself or feels powerless. Critics may put anti-Western dictators into one basket, but the dictators themselves do not necessarily see it that way. The axis of autocrats is complicated. Military obligations that exist between Russia and North Korea do not exist between Russia and Iran. Russia identifies far more closely with China as a nuclear-armed great power than with Iran, which never crossed the nuclear threshold.

Putin, as he searches for evidence that he was right to launch his disastrous war on Ukraine, may find one in Iran’s fate as a state that failed to push threats away from its borders and allowed itself to be encircled by unfriendly governments and U.S. bases.

Nevertheless, the Russian regime has built its strategy on Trump being distinct from his predecessors in the White House. His attack on yet another dictatorship undermines that strategy, which hinges on hopes for a Trump-led political revolution across the West. It also strengthens the position of skeptics within the Russian leadership who believe that with or without Trump, the United States is forever destined to be hostile toward Russia.

The abrupt elimination of the Iranian leadership also raises, once again, the question of succession in Russia in the event of a leader’s sudden removal from power. Putin may have no intention of preparing for any transfer of power. But senior officials and elite groups may begin to consider their strategy for such a scenario—especially since Trump, in both Venezuela and Iran, seems to be avoiding placing his hopes in the opposition for regime change to the benefit of the existing nomenklatura. The approach appears to be to remove the top official, eliminate other irreconcilable elements if necessary, and force those remaining to comply under threat of annihilation while simultaneously calling on the people to seize power.

The joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is rightly seen as further proof of the collapse of the rules-based international order and the triumph of naked coercion by powerful states. Unlike the Bush administration’s appearance at the United Nations to formally seek support for the Iraq War, Trump did not even attempt persuasion. He sought neither congressional nor U.N. approval. He has abruptly abandoned his theatrical peacekeeping role to start a new war without scruples or a logical explanation.

Paradoxically, one of the cornerstones of the global institutional order remains—despite and in some sense because of Trump’s actions. Although he insists that his goal is not to export democracy but to benefit U.S. security and eliminate threats, it is authoritarian regimes that are coming under fire. Although the Trump administration squeezes friend and foe alike, it is the internal fragility and lack of legitimacy that makes autocracies faster to crumble. Trump’s talk about annexing Greenland aside, there is no institutional capacity or conceptual framework for using force against democracies even under Trump.

With the emergence of players like Trump who operate outside the established international system, the weakened legitimacy of authoritarian regimes becomes a major threat to their security. In this respect, Russia really does rank alongside Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. That is why, despite all the differences between them, Putin takes such a personal interest in the fates of Khamenei, Maduro, former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad,, and other fellow authoritarians.