Yes, Great Powers Share Intelligence

Trump chose the worst possible moment to remind us

Reports that Russia may be providing targeting intelligence to Iran drew a familiar response from Donald Trump: a verbal shrug. Great powers share intelligence with partners, he said. The United States would do the same thing.

From a strictly analytical standpoint, the observation is not wrong. Intelligence sharing has long been part of coalition warfare. The United States has provided targeting data and operational intelligence to partners in conflicts ranging from the Persian Gulf War to the current war in Ukraine. Intelligence cooperation allows militaries to coordinate operations, improve targeting, and reduce uncertainty on the battlefield.

(Department of Defense)

Russia’s relationship with Iran fits that pattern in its own way. The two governments have grown closer during the war in Ukraine, particularly as Tehran has supplied Moscow with Shahed-series drones that Russia has used extensively in strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Those systems have become a regular feature of Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s energy grid and urban centers. Iran supplies the weapons; Russia integrates them into its military operations.

Intelligence cooperation between the two governments, if it is occurring, would hardly be surprising in that context. Which leads to an uncomfortable but necessary analytic observation: If Russia is providing intelligence to Iran, the available evidence suggests it has not been particularly effective.

The United States had been signaling its readiness to strike Iranian targets for weeks. Military assets were repositioned across the region. Diplomatic messaging alternated between warnings and gestures of negotiation. None of those signals was especially subtle. Yet Iran still appeared to be caught off guard when events unfolded.

If Moscow had been supplying Tehran with high-quality strategic intelligence about American intentions, the results are difficult to detect. One explanation is that the intelligence Russia provided was limited or incomplete. Another possibility is that Iranian leaders discounted warnings they received, assuming Washington would ultimately avoid direct military action. A third possibility is that Tehran had some sense of American intentions but lacked the operational capability needed to prepare effectively.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that Russia may not have had much intelligence of real strategic value to offer Iran in the first place. Russia’s intelligence performance during the Ukraine war has often been uneven. Moscow misjudged the scale of Ukrainian resistance, the cohesion of Western sanctions, and the durability of NATO support for Kyiv. A system that misread those developments is unlikely to possess deep visibility into American deliberations about Iran.

At the tactical level, Russia might still provide supplemental information—satellite observations or data about U.S. military movements in the region. Such intelligence can help refine operations around the margins. But there is little indication that Moscow possesses capabilities that fundamentally alter Iran’s strategic position.

From an intelligence perspective, then, it would be easy to take a certain comfort in the situation. But that observation misses the point entirely.

The issue is not whether Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran. The real question is why Trump shrugged it off at this particular moment.

His remark came after he traveled to Dover Air Force Base on Saturday to honor six American service members — a bit of a reach on my part, given he attended the solemn ceremony wearing a baseball cap — who were killed in Iranian strike. Their bodies were returning home in flag-draped coffins as families stood on the tarmac to receive them. In that moment, the confrontation with Iran was not an abstract geopolitical debate; it was a reminder that American lives had just been lost.

The days prior were no better. Trump has already exhibited his all-too-familiar tone-deafness, suggesting that deaths are part of war and “there will likely be more.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added his own brand of callousness when he attacked the media coverage of the six deaths, accusing reporters of highlighting the casualties to make the president “look bad.”

Perhaps Russia had nothing to do with those attacks. Perhaps the intelligence cooperation now being discussed played no role at all. Both possibilities remain open.

But leadership is revealed not only in what a president understands, but in what he chooses to emphasize publicly. Saying that Russia helping Iran is simply the sort of thing the United States might do as well may reflect the cold logic of intelligence cooperation. What it does not reflect is an awareness of how that statement sounds to the families who are preparing to bury their sons and daughters; a seventh service member has since died from the opening wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks.

Those families do not need lectures about the realities of geopolitics. They understand that military service carries risk and that adversaries cooperate against the United States. What they expect from a president—and his national security team—in that moment is something simpler: the recognition that sacrifice deserves more than a detached explanation of how the world works.

Trump has struggled with that distinction before. During his first term he was reported to have described Americans who died in World War II as “suckers” and “losers”. His defenders disputed the account, but the episode resonated because it seemed consistent with a broader pattern in how he speaks about military sacrifice.

The comment about Russia and Iran — and the prospects of more deaths of U.S. service members — fits that pattern.

Understanding the cold mechanics of intelligence cooperation is one thing. But acknowledging that reality does not require shrugging at it, especially when Americans have just been killed.

There is a difference between understanding how the world works and appearing indifferent to the consequences. That difference is what Trump’s comment erased.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.

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