p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {text-decoration: underline ; font-kerning: none; color: #042eee; -webkit-text-stroke: 0px #042eee} Despite Russia’s partnership with Iran and routine criticism of US policy toward Tehran, Moscow’s response to reports that the United States launched a cyberattack on “computer systems that control Iranian missile launches” has been very curious. Most interesting is that Russia has hardly responded at all.

Russian officials have publicly acknowledged reports that President Donald Trump approved and then canceled military strikes on Iran; the day following this news, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov described the situation surrounding Iran as one that was “on the brink of war.” Nevertheless, Ryabkov did not address the reported US cyberattacks either in those comments or later. A capable professional, Ryabkov speaks to the media regularly about Iran-related diplomacy as Russia’s principal negotiator of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which the Trump administration has withdrawn; he has also been one of Russia’s top diplomats in addressing other nuclear and security issues. Other Russian officials have not discussed the reported cyberattacks either.

Also striking is that Russia’s domestic media did not report the cyberattacks that The New York Times revealed on June 22. Russian experts contacted by Al-Monitor had likewise seen no domestic Russian news coverage of US cyberattacks on Iran’s missile control systems.

Notably, the Russian media organization that did refer to the attacks is not a domestic one. Russia’s foreign-language website Sputnik News, a government-controlled propaganda organization, ran several stories about the reports. These included a story about simultaneous US cyberattacks on Iranian intelligence organizations, another presenting Iranian government claims that US cyberforces “have yet to carry out a successful attack” on Iran, and a third describing a new, indigenously developed Iranian military communication system that an Iranian news service called “invulnerable to hacks.”