Trump praises Putin’s neutrality on Iran, despite the obvious lack of neutrality
One foundational problem with the American’s newest compliment of his Russian counterpart: Putin wasn’t “neutral” in Iran at all.
As the Group of Seven summit in France wrapped up, Donald Trump covered a lot of ground in an hourlong press conference, including extending some curious praise to his friend in Moscow.
“I want to thank Vladimir Putin, he was very neutral,” the American president said, referring to the Russian leader’s role in the war with Iran. “They could have made it much more difficult for us.”
Whether Trump realizes this or not, there was a foundational problem with his compliment: Putin wasn’t neutral at all.
Just days into the war with Iran, multiple news organizations, including MS NOW, reported that Russia provided Iran with information that could help it strike American targets. One U.S. official told MS NOW point-blank that Russia was “providing intelligence help to Iran.”
It wasn’t long before any doubts about the accuracy of the reporting evaporated. Iranian officials publicly confirmed Russia’s “military cooperation”; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz acknowledged Russia’s wartime “strategic partnership” with Iran; and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said matter-of-factly that Russia was “providing intelligence to Iran to better attack and kill American troops.”
The Wall Street Journal soon after advanced the broader story, reporting that Russia expanded its intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Iran, “providing satellite imagery and improved drone technology to aid Tehran’s targeting of U.S. forces in the region.”
In theory, this should have been the sort of news that sent shockwaves through Washington. In the middle of an ongoing and deadly hot war in the Middle East, the administration had reason to believe one U.S. adversary (Russia) was helping another U.S. adversary (Iran) facilitate attacks against us.
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA and Pentagon official, said during a Senate hearing, “If Russia is helping to kill U.S. forces, we have crossed a Rubicon. We are in another moment. We have to take decisive action on that.”
But in practice, there were no shockwaves. Trump and his team chose not to care.
The initial reaction from the American president and his team to the original allegations was to express total indifference. This was followed by news that the Republican administration agreed effectively to reward Putin’s regime by easing oil sanctions on the country.
All the while, top members of Team Trump publicly vouched for Russia’s trustworthiness and echoed Kremlin talking points.
The American president managed to make the problem worse during a Fox News interview, conceding that he believed Russia “might be” assisting Iran but adding that Putin’s regime deserves a pass because the U.S. has assisted Ukraine.
“You know, it’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness,” Trump said. “They do it and we do it.”
Days later, he went further, telling the Financial Times, in reference to Russia, “It’s hard to say, ‘You’re targeting us, but we’ve been helping Ukraine.’”
In other words, the incumbent American president, during a war, both echoed Putin’s talking points and excused an adversary for helping a different adversary target American troops and assets.
All the while, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared publicly that his country’s government had “irrefutable” evidence that Russia had provided intelligence to the Iranian regime during the war, but he simply couldn’t get the White House to take an interest in the proof.
A simple question appears unavoidable: When Trump said Putin was “very neutral” in the war with Iran, was the American president ignorant about recent events he ought to understand, or does he not know what “neutral” means?