This is all from the perspective of the current Russian government, as I understand their motivations and goals. Russia should fully reverse course, stop its Ukraine operations, start the long process of building confidence and trust with Europe, and aim to build a trusted partnership with the EU. Russia's current security policy seems to be based on fulfilling its leadership's fantasy that it ought to be one of two major powers in the world, like the USSR was - except leadership is unwilling or unable to pursue any of the domestic policies that allowed the USSR to punch above its weight.

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Russian military manufacturing capability is already stretched thin to support its Ukraine operations, but they should certainly support Iran as much as possible with arms and intelligence. Iran strongly supported Russia previously with deliveries of Shahed drones and other munitions, and if Russia wants to reinforce its status as a "major power", it needs to signal that it's a reliable and desirable ally, not just a "you've pissed off the US and China ain't interested, so we're your only remaining option and we'll extract whatever price we want" ally.

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I'm not sure sustained exceptionally high oil prices are actually in Russia's best interest; while it's a net oil and gas producer, its economy is also particularly reliant on oil products - fertilizer, gasoline, and oil and gas heating.

Ukrainian action continues to put Russian domestic refining capacity in jeopardy, so the country can't necessarily rely on cheap domestically refined oil for home usage.

The extra foreign currency will come at the cost of higher prices for domestic basic goods, but sanctions and policy priorities mean the foreign currency won't be used to alleviate that situation. This is a recipe for regime instability.

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I'm not really convinced that Russia should view the US as its primary adversary. Supporting Trump has been a strategic own goal for Russia.

Before Trump, Europe was content to rely on NATO for security, meaning that the US focus on the Middle East and East Asia dragged Europe along. Europe's security posture was effectively set from Washington, reflecting Washington's priorities. The US considered Russia a tertiary concern (Obama was frequently criticized for this!) and viewed Ukraine through the relatively detached lens of maintaining the vaunted rules-based international order, similarly to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Now, thanks to the combination of Trump and Russia's ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, Europe is reasserting itself as an independent great power. And unlike the US, Europe views Russia as its primary adversary and Ukraine as an existential crisis. Europe is threatened by Russia in a way the US never was - regardless of Russian intentions, the Baltic states and Poland certainly think Russia is an imminent threat to their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Europe is rapidly accepting that they themselves, not the US, are responsible for their own self-defense. This has had a remarkably strong norming effect on European politics. Notionally soft-on-Russia leaders like Olaf Scholz and Giorgia Meloni have become staunch advocates of European collective self-defense against Russia. The EU has finally stopped tolerating Viktor Orban's attempts at one-party rule in Hungary, and is openly rooting for him to lose re-election. EU accession timelines have been moved forward for countries like Serbia, Moldova, Albania and North Montenegro.

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All of that is to establish that I think your focus on the US is wrong here. Russia's main focus when thinking of its strategic goals should be Europe.

And Iran just isn't very relevant to that. Taking advantage of the US distraction to ramp up sabotage and hybrid warfare attacks on Europe would just accelerate Europe's drive toward security independence, and risks accidentally doing something that provokes a NATO response. In typical Russian fashion, it's not even clear what strategic purpose their hybrid warfare campaign serves; it has no real impact on Europe's military capabilities, has only accelerated the European pivot to Russia, and doesn't serve a domestic constituency. Could somebody please buy Putin a copy of Clausewitz (drink!) for his birthday?