When three senior American officials told The Washington Post that Russia was providing Iran with sensitive intelligence, including the precise locations of US warships and aircraft operating across the Middle East, they revealed more than a tactical alliance. They exposed the architecture of a new kind of war. A war without front lines. A war fought not with tanks or missiles, but with radar beams, satellite feeds and encrypted coordinates. In the Gulf today, the battlefield is the electromagnetic spectrum, and both sides are fighting, above all else, to blind the other.

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly denied that Moscow was sharing such intelligence with Iran during a call with US President Donald Trump. The denial, however, changes little. Russia has received Iranian drones and munitions for its war in Ukraine. It has watched the US supply Ukraine with targeting intelligence used to strike Russian positions, including, reportedly, locations near Putin’s residences. Moscow’s calculus is not hard to read. Intelligence is a currency. Putin is simply spending it.

As former CIA officer Bruce Riedel once observed, in modern warfare, coordinates are often more valuable than bullets. Whoever knows where the enemy is wins. That axiom is now playing out in real time across the Gulf. Russia’s intelligence pipeline has allowed Iran to locate US and Israeli assets with a precision Tehran could not achieve alone. Iran operates only a limited constellation of military reconnaissance satellites — wholly insufficient for tracking fast-moving naval assets across open water. Russia does not share that limitation. Its advanced overhead surveillance network, including the Kanopus-V satellite — re-designated “Khayyam” upon transfer to Iranian operational use — provides Tehran with round-the-clock optical and radar imagery. For Iran, this is not a supplement to its military capability. It is the nervous system of its........

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