The Levant Files

Moscow has been covertly helping Tehran develop supersonic cruise missiles capable of striking US aircraft carriers, in what analysts call one of the most significant transfers of strategic military technology between the two countries, the Financial Times reported. The multiyear effort, codenamed C430L, drew on some of Russia's most experienced missile engineers to help Iran master ramjet propulsion — technology that lets a cruise missile sustain flight at several times the speed of sound. The FT investigation, based on leaked correspondence, travel records and patent filings, found the program began in 2023 and continued through the US-Israeli war against Iran into 2026. Fabian Hinz, a senior analyst at Conflict Armament Research, called it the transfer of "highly strategically sensitive military technology" that Iran had sought for decades, adding that a program of this scale would have needed clearance from the top of the Russian government. Supersonic, low-flying cru...

How Moscow's commentators frame the US–Iran confrontation matters for the region, and one of the clearest recent statements of the Russian view comes from the daily Kommersant. Writing there, Farhad Ibrahimov, an expert at the Financial University under the Russian Government and a lecturer at the People's Friendship University, argues that the war has entered a phase that is neither peace nor war. His first target is Donald Trump's messaging. The US president told Al Jazeera that Washington is in no hurry to negotiate, told Glenn Beck's programme that the war would end soon, and posted on Truth Social that the navy had cleared the mines from the Strait of Hormuz — the same announcement he had already made on 18 August. Ibrahimov reads the contradictions as evidence of a missing plan rather than of an approaching settlement. In Tehran, he argues, the security bloc has drawn its own conclusion. Around the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, IRGC veterans and intelligen...

By Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias, Chief Editor of TLF, Research Fellow in the Nicosia University in the field of Turkish-Iranian relations/rivarly, Historian, Journalist A few years ago, during one of Fenerbahçe’s dreadful starts to the Turkish Süper Lig, the club’s legendary former footballer Rıdvan Dilmen captured the public imagination with an unforgettable remark: “Kırmızı kar yağar, Fenerbahçe küme düşmez”—red snow will fall before Fenerbahçe is relegated. Today, I offer a similar answer to those analysts and academics—particularly in Israel, Cyprus, Turkey and Greece—who confidently predict a direct military confrontation between Turkey and Israel: red snow will fall before these two countries enter an open war. This judgment remains unchanged even after the grave recent incident in Idlib, Syria. It is not based on sympathy, sentiment or wishful thinking. It rests on the balance of forces on the ground and on three interconnected approaches in international relations: neorealism, middle-...

Syria and Russia have entered a more restrained phase of their long relationship after reaching an agreement that reduces Moscow’s military privileges while preserving channels for economic cooperation and political influence. Writing for Al-Monitor on Aug. 15, Samuel Wendel reported that the agreement reorganizes Russia’s presence at Tartus and Hmeimim, two installations that were central to Moscow’s regional power projection under former President Bashar al-Assad. The shift became visible on Aug. 11, when Syrian authorities began receiving wheat and cement at a commercial berth previously used by Russian forces. Russian personnel were simultaneously observed moving equipment away from the pier, according to Reuters. Under the agreement, negotiated over 18 months, Damascus will recover control of civilian facilities at Tartus and Hmeimim. The military sections are expected to become joint training centers within three months. Russia will retain a military presence, although under tig...

  An unprecedented battlefield partnership between a separatist movement and an al-Qaeda affiliate has transformed the conflict in northern Mali, shifting the military balance and deepening divisions over how, if at all, the war can end. When the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) launched a joint offensive on April 25, 2026, the conflict entered a phase unlike any before. A war that had long pitted the Malian state against multiple armed groups gave way to a coordinated campaign stretching from Kidal and Anefis to Tilemsi, Gao and Sevare, posing the most serious challenge to the Malian army in years and to Russia’s Africa Corps, the Kremlin-backed force that replaced the Wagner Group in Mali. Since then, the fighting has been marked by simultaneous assaults, ambushes, drone strikes and attacks on military convoys, with all sides claiming significant battlefield gains. Bamako says it is working to restore state authority and dismantle what...

Kyiv's long-range operation lands hours after Washington declared Moscow "not participating" in the war against Iran. The sequence invites a reading — but not, on the available evidence, a conclusion. A Ukrainian long-range drone operation in the Caspian Sea has killed at least one sailor aboard an Iranian commercial vessel and injured another, opening a maritime front in a theatre that until now had figured in the Russia–Ukraine war mainly as a launch platform for Kalibr cruise missiles. Tehran's Foreign Ministry confirmed the explosion, summoned Ukraine's chargé d'affaires in Tehran, and denounced what it called a hostile and criminal act. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pressed the case with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, urging a decisive European response. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said its long-range drone operators struck a set of targets deep inside Russia overnight, including air-defence assets near Rostov-on-Don and several vessels ...

  RIA Novosti, David Narmania   For two months, Washington and Tehran conducted ceasefire negotiations — only for Donald Trump to tear up the effort three weeks after the memorandum was signed. Iran says the agreement has effectively collapsed and that the Americans have resumed the war. What comes next is the subject of this report. Exchange of Strikes Since 8 July, the United States has struck Iran almost daily. The official pretext was Iranian action against commercial vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Overnight into Wednesday, 15 July, air strikes continued for seven hours, and by that afternoon US Central Command had announced a new wave of bombing, beginning at 13:00 Moscow time. According to CENTCOM's statement, the goal is to degrade Tehran's military capacity in the Strait of Hormuz. Most of the strikes have hit cities in the south of the country and along the Persian Gulf coast. According to Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for Iran's Ministry of Health, the num...

  Russia has indicated it views a potential sale of S-400 air defence systems currently operated by Turkey to the United Arab Emirates in a favorable light, according to multiple sources cited by Middle East Eye (MEE), though the outlet reported that negotiations have not yet been finalized. The S-400 systems, which Turkey purchased from Russia in 2019, led to Turkey's expulsion from the F-35 fighter jet programme and prompted a series of US sanctions targeting Turkey's defence industry. Six F-35 jets remain in US storage after their transfer to Turkey was blocked by American legislation in 2020. According to MEE, the S-400 issue and Turkey's potential return to the F-35 programme have become central topics of discussion as Washington and Ankara have worked to repair relations since Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. Under the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the US government must confirm that Turkey no longer possesses the S-400 systems before Turkey can r...

As NATO leaders wrapped up their 36th summit in Ankara this week, Russian state and state-aligned media offered a portrait of an alliance simultaneously hardening its posture toward Moscow and fraying at the seams — a dual narrative that dominated Russian coverage over the past 24 hours. A "Long-Term Threat" Designation Takes Center Stage The most-cited element of Russian coverage was the summit's draft final declaration, which multiple Russian outlets — relaying reporting from Reuters and Euronews — noted would formally label Russia a "long-term threat" to Euro-Atlantic security and stability, alongside a reaffirmation of Article 5 collective-defense commitments. A widely circulated piece carried by Rambler News described the declaration as fixing new "rules of the game" for decades to come, tying the Russia designation to a parallel pledge of €70 billion in defense assistance to Ukraine for 2026, with a comparable commitment implied for 2027. InoSMI,...

  Greek shipping companies have generated at least $3.8 billion in revenues transporting Russian oil over the past three years, capitalizing on a sanctions framework that permits the trade under strict conditions, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The investigation, based on freight cost estimates from Argus Media and tanker movement data from Kpler, found that Dynacom Tankers — founded by Greek shipping billionaire George Prokopiou — led the trade with at least $915 million in revenues, accounting for nearly a quarter of the total among Greek shipowners since July 2023. The Onassis Group’s Olympic Shipping and Management ranked second with at least $404 million, while Athens-based Stealth Maritime and Polembros Shipping each earned more than $200 million from the trade. The activity falls within the G7 price cap mechanism, introduced in December 2022 to limit Moscow’s energy revenues while maintaining global oil flows. Western operators are permitted to transport Ru...

Russian–Armenian billionaire and opposition politician Samvel Karapetyan has said that his efforts to renounce both his Russian and Cypriot citizenship cannot move forward while he remains under house arrest, placing Cyprus unexpectedly at the center of Armenia's post-election political debate. According to OC Media in a report published on 1 July, Karapetyan told reporters that he must personally visit the Russian and Cypriot embassies to submit the paperwork required to relinquish his foreign citizenships. However, he said this is impossible without court authorization because he has been under house arrest since December 2025 while facing several criminal charges, including alleged money laundering. The citizenship issue has become politically significant because Armenian law bars individuals holding foreign citizenship from serving as prime minister. Karapetyan had been presented by the opposition Strong Armenia Alliance as its candidate for the country's top political off...

Heads of state and government from all 32 NATO countries, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will attend as an invited guest, are set to gather at Ankara’s Beştepe Presidential Complex for the alliance’s summit on July 7-8, 2026. The meeting will be judged not by another declaration of unity, but by whether NATO can turn its commitments into the forces, industrial capacity and digital resilience needed to deter Russia. These questions were at the center of a June 23 press briefing held by the Center for European Policy Analysis, which NV English attended. The NATO summit in Ankara is unlikely to produce the kind of grand strategic reset that has defined some recent alliance gatherings. That is precisely the point. After several years of reorienting NATO from crisis management toward collective defense, allies have already made many of the political decisions that mattered most: a 5% defense investment benchmark, capability targets, re...

On 24 June 2026 the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Romania's parliament, let a bill “on the unification of Romania with the Republic of Moldova” pass without a vote. Under Romanian rules, a draft that is not debated within a 45-day deadline is automatically deemed approved by the first chamber. The deadline lapsed, and the session chair simply declared the proposal adopted. Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian outlets alike called it adoptare tacită — “tacit adoption,” a procedural pass-through rather than a political endorsement. The headline is easily misread. No binding unification process has begun. The bill, sponsored by the fringe far-right S.O.S. România party, still must clear the Senate, the decisive chamber, and it carries negative opinions from the government and from the Chamber's own legal and human-rights committees. A former head of the Constitutional Court called it unconstitutional, with “no chance.” Bucharest's stated priority is helping Moldova into t...

As the United States and Iran remain locked in an escalating military standoff, one country appears to be reaping significant strategic and economic rewards: Russia. That is the assessment of Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who spoke with Foreign Policy editor in chief Ravi Agrawal in an interview published May 11. The most immediate benefit for Moscow is financial. According to Gabuev, every $10 rise in crude oil prices per barrel translates into approximately $100 million in additional monthly revenue for the Russian state and its energy companies combined. Citing calculations by his Carnegie colleague Sergey Vakulenko, Gabuev noted that Russia earned $9 billion from oil sales in April alone — double its pre-invasion oil revenues. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has kept crude prices elevated, effectively functioning as a massive subsidy for Putin's war economy. But the windfall extends beyond oil. Gabuev identified three distinct advantages ...