["Middle East Policy, Volume 33, Issue 3, Autumn (Fall) 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nThe 2026 US‐Israeli war against Iran exposed the limits of Moscow's much‐discussed “strategic partnership” with Tehran. For years, the policy and expert community debated whether Russia's expanding bilateral ties reflected a genuine strategic realignment or mere opportunism. It is true that following the invasion of Ukraine, and even more so after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Moscow traded drone and missile technology with Tehran, shared expertise on evading sanctions, and cultivated ties with Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi movement—going so far as to provide targeting data for strikes on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Yet despite this growing cooperation, Russia offered only limited and carefully calibrated support once Iran and its proxies came under direct and sustained attack. This article advances three arguments. First, Russia's ties with Iran and its proxies are best understood as transactional. Second, even this limited Russian support has emboldened these actors, exacerbating conflict escalation and state fragility in the Middle East. Third, Russia used Hezbollah and the Houthis as low‐cost tools for geopolitical disruption while withholding meaningful protection when these actors faced severe retaliation.\n"]