'If they are, it's not doing much' — Trump dismisses report on Russia helping Iran against US
U.S. President Donald Trump on March 7 downplayed recent reports on Russia helping Iran target U.S. forces in the Middle East.
He was asked about a report from the Washington Post saying that Russia was providing targeting information to Iran.
"We don't know but it's not doing very well, if they are," Trump told journalists. "It's not doing much, if you take a look at what's happened to Iran over the past week."
When pushed, Trump equivocated, alluding to U.S. intelligence helping Ukraine in targeting Russian sites.
"They'd say we do it against them, wouldn't they? Wouldn't they say that, we do it against them? They can give all the information that they want, the people they're sending it to are overwhelmed. Russia would be overwhelmed too," Trump said.
An ongoing interest for Ukrainians has been Iran's Shahed drones. Iran sold a large order to Russia in the early months of the full-scale invasion in 2022, with Russia ultimately localizing production.
Shahed drones and their various Russian-made copies nightly swarm Ukrainian skies, and more recently have appeared in attacks on Iran's Gulf Arab neighbors.
Trump said that Iran was running out of drones.
"We've hit the manufacturing very hard," he said. "They're at about 9% of what they had in the first days. When this ends we're going to have a much safer world."
