WASHINGTON -- The deepening military partnership between Moscow and Tehran has moved beyond simple arms deals and into a sophisticated cross-continental defense ecosystem, according to a former Pentagon analyst.
Matthew Tavares, who specialized in Russian military strategy and US foreign policy, suggested the West is no longer facing a partnership of convenience but a strategic alignment that spans the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare.
In an interview with RFE/RL on April 29, Tavares breaks down the "democratization" of precision strikes, the vulnerability of high-end US assets, and why the externalization of Iran's defense industry may make its military infrastructure nearly impossible to dismantle.
RFE/RL: Are we looking at a tactical partnership or the early stages of a full-fledged military alliance reshaping the Middle East?
Matthew Tavares: I don't know if we're at the precipice of a full-stage military alliance, but it seems very clear to me that the relationship has been expanding pretty dramatically over the last four years or so.
When I studied this issue at the Pentagon, I often noted that Iran seemed to be an arm's-length partner for Russia, a partner they would cater to or push away depending upon whether or not they viewed Iran as a liability or not.
We normally in the military study kind of three levels of military operations: the strategic, the operational, and the tactical. Strategic are the big agreements that exist between countries: military diplomacy. Operational is multiple regions simultaneously, typically conducted by large military forces. And then tactical, which is everything from small units up to divisions and corps, which are sort of a smaller scope of military operations, but nonetheless quite important.
What we see now is an improved relationship across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
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Russia-Iran Axis Expanding The Battlefield, US Senator Thom Tillis WarnsIf we go back five to 10 years, we saw a lot of strategic cooperation in some way, shape, or form. We saw a lot of broad agreements between countries. But this is one of the first times where I'm able to see something that's happening in Ukraine and say the Russians shared the tactical information with the Iranians, and the Iranians are now employing it to attempt to defeat Gulf states, American partners -- writ large -- in the region and the US.
That is completely new, and I think it comes from a lot of tactical cooperation that's been happening between Russia and Iran over these last few years of Russia's war against Ukraine.
RFE/RL: If this relationship has been evolving so quickly, how did the West miss the scale of this buildup? Was it an intelligence failure or a misreading of intent?
Tavares: I don't think we missed it. If you kind of draw this back, a lot of commentators, both inside and outside of government, have been talking about the Russian-Iranian relationship for some time.
Ultimately, though, it's very difficult for us to stop it. Given our policies of the last administration and the current administration, we don't really have an effective mechanism to stop that relationship from maturing and growing. In some ways, it's sort of a natural byproduct of the circumstances that both countries find themselves in today.
RFE/RL: You recently pointed to drone production in Tatarstan. Does that signal Russia is no longer just a supplier but effectively an extension of Iran's defense industry?
Tavares: There's clearly a two-way street when it comes to defense material production for both Iran and Russia. If I were to break open an Iranian Shahed,or a Russian Geran system, I would find, I'm sure, a lot of shared components. I would find a lot of shared designs. I would find some national specificity; the Russian version might have a different radio system or a different sort of navigational system or process, but it would be relatively the same tech.
What this makes very difficult for the US and Western partners to determine is who is doing what. It's highly possible that both countries are building subcomponents or using front companies to get certain subcomponents of these systems, and then they are assembling them jointly, or assembling parts of them and passing them off to the other country to finish assembly.
It's going to be devilish for intel analysts to determine the direction of this relationship. But to me, it seems very clear that regardless of who built what part, there's a defense material relationship where both are relying on the other's supply chains to produce shared weapon systems. And that really is novel; that is a new aspect of that relationship.
RFE/RL: Are these low-cost UAV swarm tactics fundamentally undercutting traditional US military advantages? Are we witnessing a "democratization" of air power?
Tavares: I do think that it undercuts some of our traditional military advantages. But it's not something we're taking lightly or watching happen without trying to develop a response. The problem is the response is going to be a multiyear effort to produce systems that are capable of defending US forces from these kinds of threats.
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Russia, Iran Tout 'Strategic' Ties Amid Conflict With United StatesThe bottom line is that the drone development process we've seen take place by both Ukraine and Russia in their war has democratized something which was previously a niche capability, and that's precision strike.
Right now, both Russia and Ukraine -- and I suppose any other buyer of a Shahed-type weapon system and one-way attack munitions, and even FPV drones with a kinetic payload -- are capable of flying fairly long distances, semi-autonomously or autonomously, and dropping a munition on a point. That is something that was a distinct US military advantage in the early '90s and the mid-2000s, which now almost anybody can do for some $20,000 of munitions.
The real fear that I have, and I suppose it's a fear shared by a number of folks like me, is that the incredible defense production Russia has undertaken over the last few years to aid its war in Ukraine will be turned, after the war ends, toward providing these very cheap precision systems to all kinds of countries and all kinds of factions and groups that ought not to have them. That's my main concern.
Not only are we seeing the democratization of precision strike and the ubiquity of a very lethal and low-cost systems, we also have the potential for incredible proliferation after the war is over.
RFE/RL: Does the March strike on the AWACS platform at Prince Sultan Air Base mark the end of so-called safe zones for US assets in the region? How exposed are US bases across the Gulf right now?
Tavares: Firstly, I don't think anyone considered any base in the Middle East to be a "safe zone." The US government has an expectation and an understanding of risk that perhaps was not accurate in this case. They should have viewed Prince Sultan as perhaps a higher risk than they may have, or maybe they understood it was a risk and for another reason they decided to accept that risk.
The understanding of the risk profile of different locations for US forces is going to have to change as a result of not only the ongoing Iran conflict but also our understanding of adversary capabilities; that's changing as well. And as far as radars are concerned, the issue with current US capabilities, in my view, is that they're too "exquisite."
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US Lawmaker Wilson Flags Western Chips Still Flowing Into Russian, Iranian DronesIn a world in which precision munitions are democratized, in a world in which a facility can produce 5,000 Shaheds a month, having single points of failure for either a radar network or a targeting network, or some kind of other important critical defense capability, you just can't have single points of failure anymore. You have to get rid of them, or you have to make that capability so ubiquitous that it no longer is worth the enemy's time to attempt to attack it.
That's where you're seeing some of these conversations begin to play out in the Pentagon. They've been playing out for years, but as we look at the pieces of the Iran conflict, those reviews are being undertaken with increased urgency.
RFE/RL: The US relies heavily on AI for targeting, but you suggest adversaries are catching up. Is America losing its technological edge?
Tavares: I don't think it's necessarily losing its edge. If you look at the AI companies in the US, they're really at the vanguard of what can be done with artificial intelligence.
The issue is a little bit more complex in the sense that China and Russia are going to be spinning up AI that works in their service. It's unwise to expect US dominance or even overmatch of that technology in a future conflict.
You have to expect that although the enemy may not have the perfect AI system or an AI system as good as ours, there are plenty of capable AI models they can use for their own purposes and incorporate into their targeting operations as well.
So as a general sort of doctrine, you should never rest on one's laurels and say, "Yep, we've got the better tech. No further adjustments are required." No, the focus should be on constantly improving that tech and maintaining that technological advantage by harnessing the best parts about American society: our ability to innovate, create, and build new things.
RFE/RL: How concerning is it that Iran's capabilities can now be externalized to Russia? Does that make dismantling Iran's military infrastructure almost impossible?
Tavares: It currently complicates the matter, yeah. And I was speaking about this just a few days ago: What we really have is something of a tripartite relationship here with Russia, China, and Iran. And although I don't necessarily give much credence to these reports, it was reported that after the strikes last summer, Iran entered into discussions with China for new air defense systems.
You're only going to see conversations like that continue, and I wouldn't be surprised if five years from now we are looking at an Iran that has defense material production externalized to both Russia and China, for survivability, but also to take advantage of the base of supply that exists in both of those countries.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Russia does the same thing with Iran and China. It makes too much sense, and it makes all three of those countries relatively difficult to fight with, because in order to defeat a country, you typically need to also attrit the military supply chain. If the supply chain goes directly into another country, in order to defeat it you risk either externalizing the conflict or just allowing the country that you're currently fighting to continue to get defense material.
It just makes things very, very complicated for war planners, and it's something that, if you're trying to prepare for the next conflict, you want to find a way to avoid.
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Russian, Chinese Lifelines Keeping Tehran's Military Reconstruction Alive, Experts WarnRFE/RL: What would it take for Moscow or Beijing to tip the balance decisively in Iran's favor?
Tavares: It's an open question as to whether or not the current balance is in Iran's favor. It's a very difficult question.
Iran is going to continue to take advantage of its relationship with Russia in ways that are going to give the US increasing tactical challenges. If it's working now, the Iranians are going to double down on it, and if it involves Russia, based on what I observed, Russia will be ready to support Iran.
RFE/RL: Finally, are we witnessing the early contours of a new kind of warfare ecosystem where AI, drones, and great power coordination redefine conflict globally?
Tavares: I'm concerned with the tactical and operational level of conflict. And what I'm seeing is AI targeting solutions being paired with very, very inexpensive precision strike. In that scenario, human beings on the battlefield, at the front line of the battlefield, become a liability. We haven't seen this pace of military change or military operational change in a very long time.
I worry about a future environment in which war no longer is bound by human operational tempos and becomes sort of an AI-driven targeting match using autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. That kind of pace and scale of warfare, I think, would be very hard for a human mind to sort of wrap itself around.
I don't know exactly what the future holds, but the kind of war that you can envision with those systems has the potential to be far more lethal than anything we've seen in the last 25 to 30 years.