The C++ forward progress guarantee enables more optimizations since it allows the compiler to reason more easily about loops:
> The standards added the forward progress guarantees to change an optimization problem from "solve the halting problem" to "there will be observable side effects in the forms of termination, I/O, volatile, and/or atomic synchronization, any other operation can be reordered". The former is generally impossible to solve, whereas the latter is eminently tractable.
But yeah, that's one of the more foot-gunny UB rules that Rust does not have. But it does mean it doesn't mark functions as `mustprogress` in LLVM IR which means it misses out on whatever optimizations that enables.