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US intelligence is investigating whether Russia helped Iran carry out precise drone strikes on secret CIA facilities in the Gulf.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: CIA facilities overseas are among Washington’s most closely guarded secrets, ranging from stations housed inside embassies to safe houses and clandestine operational hubs whose locations are not public. At least two were hit in March, including the CIA station inside the US embassy in Riyadh and a separate site in eastern Iraq, with some sources telling reuters that additional sites were struck. No deaths or injuries were reported.
What’s going on now: First reported by Reuters, the probe is still in its early stages, but four people familiar with the intelligence said the accuracy of the strikes, combined with everything Moscow already gives Tehran on the technical side, is what opened the inquiry, even as investigators stress they have not reached firm conclusions.
Analysts believe two Shahed drones carrying Russian upgrades were used against Riyadh, according to two Western officials briefed on the intelligence. The first punched an opening in a weak point of the embassy’s outer wall, they said, and the second flew in through it and exploded.
Another source pointed to the Kometa-M, a Russian satellite navigation unit Moscow has handed to Tehran for the Shahed-136. Specialists rate it as considerably tougher to jam, and considerably more precise, than what Iran builds itself. A regional official who has read a Western intelligence memo said its authors judged that Moscow probably had a hand in selecting the CIA locations.
This comes as the Pentagon has openly said that US adversaries are helping Iran. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth acknowledged that Moscow and Beijing are each aiding Iran to some degree, but would not say how far that help goes, calling the details classified.
“There are ways in which both of those countries are, at different levels, enabling some of the things Iran is doing, yes,” he said. Trump’s former envoy to Russia and Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, put the blame on Moscow. “I think it is Russians primarily helping with targeting,” he said.
We reached out to Russia’s foreign ministry about this report and did not receive a response.
