RUS has largely been behind, and building Iran’s nuclear infrastructure all along, since 1998.
There are a number of nuclear sites the West does not even want to acknowledge.
There are significant Russian enclaves in Iran, proximal to nuclear amd other WMD class development sites. Some are very sizeable and almost exclusively Russian.
Quazi Russian civilian/military enclaves are being increasingly seen in Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Eritria, and HOA as well.
From the new Russian naval base in Eritria, they have been “assisting” the Iranian backed Huthi’s against Saudi Arabia. At least one of our two uav’s shot down over the Red Sea, was tracked with Russian 5th gen targeting system integrated into old SA-6 platform, as the SA-6 missile itself is very capable. man systems are undergoing this type of modification, as it is a cheaper way to make a system much more lethal.
In many cases, they are rapidly building out military UGF’s, LOC’s, and military storage infrastructure (for rebuilt armor), ISR, missile, air Force, and naval defense systems.
Regarding Iran, Russian weapons engineers have been using Iran for decades. On multiple occasions, I have personally watched footage of various U.S. uparmored vehicles being destroyed by experimental Russian munitions tested on us in Iraq, and also tested in Afghanistan (from Iran), with Russian engineers discussing what was happening in slow motion. They wanted us to see them blowing up our armor and personnel. Moscow used Iranian spies, smuggling routes, and poc’s to know where placement of experimental munitions needed to go, which would destroy our vehicles and most of the time kill our personnel.
It’s hard to tell what is going on here with France, but Macron probably playes into Moscows hands.
In the macro picture, Moscow absolutely needs to control the energy flow into the EU, to create EU dependency, in order to then be able to determine EU economic, finance, foreign, and military policy (to break up NATO). Not that I am big on NATO.
If Moscow can accomplish this, they will control the most valuable aggregated economy in the world, and by default be the most determinate factor in total world trade.
But they have to control ME energy and the Suez to accomplish this.
To even do this, Russia has to defeat or keep Ukraine destabilized or marginalized. They need Ukrainian steel (which they have largely taken), and to control Ukraines very large gas reserves, (through corruption), in order to keep control of the dynamically militarized springboard of all efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean and ME, the springboard being Russia’s Southern Military District, Crimea, and the Black Sea.
This is the macro picture, and is the goal behind what is happening across the region.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Jordan to a lesser extent, are the unavoidable block, which can disrupt Russian goal of EU economic and policy supremacy.
Sent from my phone - with many of mistakes.