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In the second week of March, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to be “helpful” in the Middle East. More recently, in a spat with the E.U. foreign policy chief over America’s diplomatic stance on Russia and Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly snapped “We are doing the best we can to end the war” and indicated the United States would be happy to stop if Europe thought it could do better. Admittedly, in diplomacy it is sometimes wise to say the opposite of what you believe. As such, the best I can say about these comments by the president and the secretary of state is that I hope they don’t actually believe them. This because Russia is working hard to help Iran kill people in the Middle East, including American servicemembers, and the U.S. government is not doing the best it can to end the war in Ukraine. These problems are now inextricably linked.
Recent reporting indicates that Russia is providing real-time targeting data to help Iran strike American and Israeli assets. The Financial Times cites Western intelligence reports that claim Russia is shipping drones to Ukraine. And Britain’s defense minister claims “Russia and Iran have been working together — sharing tactics, training, and tech.”
More of America’s warfighters could soon pay the price with their lives, not to mention military personnel and civilians in the countries around Iran that have found themselves under fire since the war began.
Moscow is linking the war in Ukraine with the conflict in the Middle East. Indeed, Politico claims that Russia offered to stop supporting Iranian targeting if the United States stopped supporting Ukrainian targeting. Reportedly, and thankfully, Washington declined to take them up on that. But that “no thanks” shouldn’t be the Trump administration’s final move.
If the Trump administration hopes to raise the costs of Russian support for Iran against American forces and secure a stable settlement in Eastern Europe, the White House should immediately adopt steps that make this policy too costly for the Kremlin. They can start with more, not less, intelligence support for targeting Russia’s military leadership and energy facilities.
Next, the administration should remove all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-supplied weapons. I am not talking about supplying more weapons from the United States, but simply allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it already has to their full effect. The Trump administration blocks Ukraine from using U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for strikes inside Russia, even after earlier policy changes opened the door for some cross-border use. That is exactly the wrong signal. If Russia is broadening the war by supporting Iranian attacks in the Middle East, the United States should not preserve Russian military infrastructure, air bases, launch sites, and fuel depots simply because they sit across an internationally recognized border.
The U.S. government should also lift key restrictions that would enable Ukraine to build more of its own precision strike weapons. Since Ukraine is neither a formal military ally nor a “Major Non-NATO ally” (a term that indicates a preferred arms and technology sales and sharing relationship, not an actual alliance), it is subject to normal restrictions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, managed by the State Department. But many of these restrictions can and should be raised.
Ukraine’s defense sector expanded sharply in 2025, with the Ministry of Defense approving more than 1,300 new domestically produced weapons and military equipment models for operational use that year. In early 2026, Kyiv also began issuing its first wartime export licenses and publicly moved toward scaling arms exports and defense-industrial growth. That is the opening Washington should exploit. Rather than donating finite stocks, the United States should transfer the information and permissions needed for building production capacity so Ukraine can mass-produce its own long-range drones, cruise missiles, and other precision strike systems at scale.
Concretely, that means easing technology transfer barriers on guidance packages, software, design data, critical components, integration expertise, and production know-how needed for precision strike weapons, while backing joint ventures and co-production agreements with Ukrainian firms. Reportedly, Ukraine was preparing the legal details of a joint arms production venture with the United States. Kyiv is considering consortia with partners to build more advanced air defenses. Others are already moving in this direction: Britain and Ukraine announced a new defense partnership this month to promote joint drone technology. Ukrainian and Polish leaders agreed in February on joint drone production. The United States should not trail its allies here. It should lead.
These measures combined would put Ukraine in a different league than it is now, allowing its military to punish Russia not just for its invasion and unwillingness to sincerely negotiate, but for its aid to Iran’s death machine. And critically, this can all be done without compromising the U.S. military’s ability to fight, operate, and prepare in other theaters from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.
Diplomacy often needs teeth: pressure that changes an adversary’s cost-benefit analysis. Trump, unfortunately, did not retire the hesitation of his predecessor’s approach to pressuring Moscow. In many ways, he has made it even worse by acceding, at times, to Putin’s narratives and justifications. When Washington limits Ukraine’s ability to strike back — as the Biden administration did and the Trump administration continues to do — or signals a willingness to force concessions on Kyiv, it inadvertently rewards Russian intransigence. And for the first time, the costs of doing that are now being borne by American and partner forces in the region. The White House should establish a direct, credible link between Russian aggression and the military and economic costs it will be forced to pay.
By maintaining de facto safe zones within Russian territory where Ukraine is forbidden from using certain munitions, the United States has allowed Moscow to interfere in multiple theaters, including the Middle East, without facing repercussions. The Kremlin can no longer operate under the belief that time is on its side.
Critics of this more coercive approach may argue that allowing Ukraine to use long-range systems against Russian military infrastructure is an unnecessary escalation in the European theater. They may claim that Washington should keep the two conflicts isolated to prevent a wider conflagration. And they will note that the United States already helps Ukraine with its own targeting processes.
But that argument ignores the reality that Moscow has already collapsed the distinction between these theaters. By providing real-time targeting assistance and now drones to Iranian forces striking American forces and assets, the Kremlin has already chosen to expand the strategic scope of the conflict. And, thankfully, America has more capacity to escalate than Russia without diverting assets that are currently in demand.
Nor is there meaningful symmetry between the forms of assistance. The war with Iran certainly raises its own legal questions, but there is still a clear difference between helping Ukraine defend itself against a Russian invasion condemned by most of the world and helping Iran target American forces and allies across the Middle East. More importantly, failure to impose costs for Russia’s behavior risks signaling that Putin can spread the conflict to other parts of the world while Trump continues to be restrained vis-à-vis Ukraine.
To bring Russia to the table for a sincere and sustainable settlement with Ukraine and limit its ability to help Iran, the Trump administration needs to turn up the heat. If the Russian military is busy defending its own logistics, energy facilities, and military leaders from high-precision American weapons, it will have less capacity to provide targeting assistance to Tehran.
The logic of coercion is simple: An adversary will only stop its provocations when the cost of continuing them becomes unbearable. By lifting all usage restrictions, the United States provides Ukraine with the “sticks” necessary to make the status quo intolerable for the Kremlin.
Russia is a common denominator in both wars. It is time for the president to stop handling these crises as if they are separate. He should punish Russia for its support for Iranian efforts to kill Americans. And a settlement in Europe will only be reached when Putin realizes that his aid to Iran and his invasion of Ukraine have reached a dead end. By letting Ukraine take the gloves off, the White House can finally create the leverage required to bring these wars to a close in way that advantages U.S. interests and will be more likely to allow Washington to finally focus on priorities in the Indo-Pacific and closer to home.
Ryan Evans is the founder of War on the Rocks.
Image: Пресс-служба Президента России via Wikimedia Commons
