Over the weekend, an abortive rebellion by a segment of the Russian military apparatus seemed to expose Vladimir Putin’s weakness. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, have pushed forward with what appear to be the preliminary operations of the awaited counteroffensive. With all this happening, Kiev’s embassy in Israel deemed yesterday an opportune time to lambaste the Jewish state for taking, in its view, insufficient steps to help Ukraine defend itself against the Russian onslaught. This undiplomatic complaint ignored not only the real limitations on Jerusalem’s options, but also the fact that, as Jonathan Spyer explains, Russia and Israel are, like it or not, aligned against one another:

There is today a de-facto Moscow-Tehran alliance. As such, a decisive defeat for Moscow in its Ukraine invasion will be a defeat for Iran too. The seismic shocks such a defeat might well set off in Russia would weaken Moscow’s capacity for offering support and assistance to its emergent Mideast partner.

[The outcome of the Ukraine war] matters to Israel because the maintenance of Western prestige and power is also an Israeli strategic interest. But, more concretely, it matters because Israel’s main regional enemy is a key element of the Russian war effort. New information released by the Biden administration in early June shows the extent of Iranian assistance to the Russian war effort in Ukraine. The administration has referred to Tehran in recent weeks as Russia’s “top military backer.”

All this is not a one-way street, of course. In return, Russia is set to supply Iran with Su-35 fighter jets, attack helicopters, and possibly—and most significantly—with the S-400 air-defense system. All these systems, once integrated, would enormously assist the Iranian capacity for defending its airspace.

This emergent partnership has non-military aspects too. In an agreement signed last month, Russia and Iran pledged to build a north-south transportation corridor, buttressing the maritime links across the Caspian through the construction of railway lines adjacent to it. Such a system would serve to strengthen the capacity to bypass Western sanctions. . . . An anti-Israel alliance will in the near future receive a hammer blow from Ukrainian fighters using Western weapons systems. It is in Israel’s interest that the hammer strikes home.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.