When three senior American officials told the Washington Post that Russia is providing Iran with classified information, including the exact locations of American warships and aircraft operating across the Middle East, they revealed more than just a tactical alliance. They exposed the structure of a new kind of war. A war without front lines. Wars were fought not with tanks and missiles, but with radar beams, satellite feeds, and encoded coordinates. In today’s Gulf, the battleground is the electromagnetic spectrum, with each side fighting above all to blind the other.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly denied that Russia was sharing such information with Iran in a phone conversation with US President Donald Trump. But denying it won’t change much. Russia received drones and ammunition from Iran for the Ukraine war. The United States has reportedly provided Ukraine with targeting information used to attack Russian positions, including locations near President Vladimir Putin’s residence. Moscow Calculus is not difficult to read. Intelligence is currency. Putin is just spending it.
Signal as a weapon
As former CIA official Bruce Riedel once observed, in modern warfare, coordinates are often worth more than bullets. The one who knows where the enemy is wins. That axiom is now being implemented in real time across the Gulf. Russian intelligence pipelines have enabled Iran to identify U.S. and Israeli assets with a precision that Iran could not have achieved on its own. Iran operates a limited fleet of military reconnaissance satellites, which are woefully inadequate to track fast-moving naval assets over the open ocean. Russia does not share that restriction. A sophisticated overhead surveillance network, including the Canopus-V satellite (redesignated Qayyam following Iranian operational transfer), provides Tehran with 24-hour optical and radar imagery. For Iran, this is not a supplement to its military power. It is the nervous system of precision attackism.
The drone that crashed into a U.S. military facility in Kuwait, killing six U.S. service members, did not find its target by chance. Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that several recent attacks by Iran have hit facilities directly related to U.S. operations, targets whose coordinates are not listed on public maps. It’s not difficult to track sourcing.
chinese hand of silence
Beijing’s role is more quiet. However, it has some serious consequences. China has spent years reshaping Iran’s electronic warfare landscape. It is exporting advanced radar systems, transitioning Iran’s military navigation from U.S. GPS to China’s encrypted Beidou-3 satellite, and leveraging a growing satellite network to support Iranian military signals intelligence and topographic mapping. Retired Israeli Air Force Brigadier General Amos Yadlin once said clearly: “Every second counts.” If Iran could shave minutes off detection and targeting, it would change the balance in the sky. China doesn’t just save time. It reshaped the entire kill chain.
The YLC-8B anti-stealth radar, a Chinese-supplied UHF band system, uses low frequencies designed to reduce the effectiveness of radar-absorbing coatings on U.S. stealth aircraft. The B-21 Raider and F-35C were designed to be invisible. It is considerably inferior to YLC-8B. And now, Reuters reports that Iran is close to a deal to acquire 50 CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles. The CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missile is an export version of China’s YJ-12, capable of traveling at Mach 3 and sea-skimming at altitudes that compress a ship’s reaction window to a few seconds. Military analysts call them “aircraft carrier killers.” USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford are currently operating within range of engagement.
US and Israeli countermeasures
The US and Israel are not passive. they are hunting. U.S. and Israeli intelligence teams tracked the movements of Iran’s leadership, mapped the command nodes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and quickly and accurately destroyed Iran’s radar infrastructure during the early stages of Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury, revealing just how weak Iran’s defense integration really is. As former Israeli Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Eitan Ben Eliyahu pointed out, destroying radars is not just about destroying machines. It blinds the enemy. In the first hours of the war, they erased much of it.
But Revolutionary Guards spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini claimed that Iran had destroyed nearly 10 advanced US radar systems across the region. This statement, even if partially accurate, provides a partial explanation of how Iranian missiles reached Israel, Gulf capitals, and other targets. Asked directly about Russian intelligence support on CBS’ 60 Minutes, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded with studied simplicity: “We’re tracking everything.” It can either be reassuring or a warning. Probably both.
new power balance
For decades, the Gulf region has been an arena of overwhelming technological superiority for the United States and Israel. That advantage has not disappeared yet. But it has been quietly and deliberately eroded by years of Chinese hardware transfers and Russian intelligence sharing. As a senior U.S. military commander recently acknowledged, signals are the new bullet, and those who control the spectrum will win the battle. Neither side has definitive control over it. That in itself is a big change.
There are precedents for this struggle, but they are not consoling. In 1991, coalition forces jammed Iraq’s radar networks and thoroughly fooled Saddam Hussein’s defenses, allowing U.S. aircraft to attack with near impunity. Electronic countermeasures were decisive. Baghdad fought blindly and was defeated. Iran has been studying its war in detail for 30 years. It has studied all subsequent conflicts in which technologically inferior forces were dismantled from the air. Russian satellite feeds and Chinese radar structures are, in part, Iran’s answer to those lessons. Tehran is determined not to become the next Baghdad.
There is a deeper strategic logic at work that goes beyond Iran’s immediate survival. China is not arming Tehran out of ideological solidarity. It treats conflict as a live ammunition laboratory. Any potential CM-302 engagement against a U.S. carrier strike group could generate targeting and intercept data that Beijing’s military planners would thoroughly study, refining doctrine toward a scenario in which China is actually interested: Taiwan. Meanwhile, Russia has seen Western sanctions and information on Ukrainian targets hollow out its military credibility. Enabling Iran to bleed U.S. forces in the Gulf and deplete its inventory of interceptor weapons is not just transactional. This is a form of strategic debt collection.
Its meaning is not abstract. The Gulf is becoming the first theater where electronic warfare may prove more decisive than conventional firepower. Alliances are being redrawn not by military deployments or treaty signings, but by information flows and satellite constellations. Russia and China have not sent divisions to support Tehran. They’re doing something more permanent. We are teaching Iran how to see things.
Radar beams are now as deadly as missiles. Intelligence is the decisive currency. In this signal war, Iran is fighting for unprecedented equality, and for the first time has a partner who can provide it. For the United States and Israel, the challenge is no longer simply defeating Tehran. This is to ensure that Iran fires blindly when the trigger is pulled.
The question is no longer whether the Gulf will erupt. That’s already the case. The question is, when the smoke finally rises, who will be able to see clearly?
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
