America’s decision to launch attacks on Iran and doubts over Nato have been a gift for the Russian president
The Times View
April 10, 2026
The Times
Imagine for a moment you are Vladimir Putin, surveying the international scene. It is in the West that you face your most formidable opponent. Founded in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has not only blunted the Russian threat to western Europe, it has expanded. The buffer provided by the satellites of the Warsaw Pact is a memory, its members having defected to Nato, which now presses up against your borders.
The alliance, vastly richer and more populous, even meddles in what you, with your 19th-century tsar’s brain, regard as Russia’s sphere of influence. Despite your expenditure of many thousands of lives and limitless treasure, Nato has so far blocked your attempt to devour Ukraine.
Now, after four years of inconclusive fighting, hope beckons. The oil sanctions that have done so much to damage your war economy have been eased by President Trump to compensate for the loss of production in the Gulf caused by his war against Iran. No one scares Mr Trump as much as a Maga pickup-truck driver, and gasoline prices must be kept down.
There is more. The war has opened up a fissure in Nato, Mr Trump accusing the United States’ European allies of disloyalty in not immediately having answered his call for bases from which to bomb Iran. The alliance that you, president of the Russian Federation, could never hope to defeat so long as it remained united, and which you have worked so assiduously to undermine, is splintering before your eyes.
Clearly, Mr Putin will be savouring the events of the past 40 days. Humiliated by his inability to save Bashar al Assad in Syria and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, he was running out of allies. Now, his support for Iran in providing attack drones and satellite imagery for missile targeting is being vindicated — and US help for Ukraine in similar form has been avenged.
There are other wins, too. Attention that was on Russian military failures in the Donbas has shifted to America’s inability to forcibly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, highway for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas exports. US-made Patriot missiles and other difficult-to-replace interceptors have been consumed in huge numbers, starving Ukraine of the shipments it needs. Meanwhile, Mr Putin sits back and counts the money: the monthly value of Russian oil exports has risen to $2 billion, its highest since 2022. Mr Trump’s temporary amnesty on Russian oil, due to end today, is expected to be extended as Iran’s blockade continues, filling Moscow’s war chest with more gold. Russia’s alliance with Iran has been cemented.
For Nato, this is a sobering moment. The Iran war threatens to be the catalyst for the alliance’s destruction. Although Mr Trump cannot formally terminate the Nato treaty without
congressional approval, he could, as commander-in-chief, simply make clear that in the event of a Russian attack on a Nato member American help would not be forthcoming. That would invalidate Nato’s basic law that an attack on one is an attack on all.
This is not a given. Both the Americans and the Europeans have a shared interest in repairing an alliance that serves them well. But if Mr Trump abandons Nato, Europe will have to go it alone and keep Ukraine in the fight. Mr Putin is one of the winners from Mr Trump’s “excursion” to the Middle East. He must not win in Ukraine.