Will Putin help Trump’s Iran deal?

Spectacular. Stunning. Game-changing. These are just three of the adjectives news reporters have used to describe Ukraine’s attack deep within Russia last weekend. There’s no doubt that the “Spiderweb” operation was technologically ingenious, well-concealed and brilliantly executed. Ukraine claimed its 117 drones destroyed or damaged some 41 strategic Russian bombers and caused $7 billion worth of damage to the Russian armed forces.

But can an attack really be game-changing if the game doesn’t change? US officials have suggested the strikes hit only 20 Russian aircraft and, while Spiderweb must have shocked Russia’s leadership, the Kremlin is still more than willing and able to continue bombing Ukraine with relative impunity. In at least his third long telephone call with Donald Trump in recent months, Vladimir Putin made clear to the US President that he would not let the drone attack go unanswered. And Trump, to the chagrin of the Ukrainians and their supporters, appears to have accepted Russia’s remorseless logic. “It was a good conversation,” said Trump, on his Truth Social. “But not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Some analysts interpreted those words as evidence that Trump has given Moscow permission to carry on its brutal campaign. Team Trump is clearly disappointed that Ukraine’s air force did not warn them about the attack, which occurred just hours before the peace talks in Turkey on Monday. Sure enough, the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators promptly disbanded, to give war another chance, though they did agree to swap 12,000 dead bodies.

The MAGA movement, deeply suspicious as it is about the “deep state,” believes the old neoconservative Republican establishment is deliberately scuppering Trump’s peace talks. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and MAGA’s high-prophet, went so far as to call for Senator Lindsey Graham to “come home or we are going to put you under arrest” – following Graham’s visit to Ukraine this week. “He’s stirring it up over there,” said Bannon, who recently had a stint in jail himself, after Graham had praised the “ever-resourceful” Ukraine for its “creative drone warfare tactics to successfully attack Russian bombers and military assets.”

The more fair-minded conclusion is that Operation Spiderweb was tactically brilliant, but the strategic fall-out remains uncertain. That fits a pattern for a lot of American or western-backed military operations in recent decades – Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria to Gaza. Political and media hawks marvel at displays of destructive power (remember when MSNBC’s Brian Williams said, “I’m tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons,’” while watching a missile attack on Syria?) But the question of who wins in the end remains horribly unclear.

The under-reported aspect of the Trump-Putin telephone calls, meanwhile, is the salience of an Iran “deal” in all their discussions. As Trump wrote on Truth Social last night, “I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we are in agreement. President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion.”

Trump’s critics will say that Putin is playing America, again: paying lip-service to Trump’s quixotic bid to tame Tehran. But as Tehran’s second-most powerful ally after China, Russia does have substantial leverage over Iran’s leadership. Trump’s abiding interest is in preventing nuclear war and “dealplomacy” – announcing agreements and playing the role of global peacemaker, not policeman. He’s also increasingly disillusioned with Ukraine. If Putin can somehow persuade the Iranians to accept Trump’s terms in the coming days, the Donald will take that as a win. That’s a big if. But either way, it looks increasingly certain there’ll be more dead bodies to swap in Eastern Europe.