https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/09/us-iran-russia-china-cost/
Oil disruption benefits Russia, as does less U.S. aid for Ukraine. And Iran distracts from China.
Trump is right that Iran has an evil regime and a 47-year record of hostility toward the United States. But it was hard to argue, even before the current bombing, that the Islamic Republic constituted a major threat to the U.S. (as opposed to Israel). Iran’s nuclear program may not have been “totally obliterated” by American air strikes in June, as Trump claimed, but it was definitely set back. There was no “imminent” threat from Iran to justify the war Trump launched on Feb. 28 out of the blue — and the cost of waging it (financed with deficit spending at a time when the national debt is already close to $39 trillion) is likely to hamper U.S. efforts to compete with much more significant adversaries, notably Iran’s allies Russia and China.
Russia is already benefitting from the Iran war. The rise in oil prices (over $100 a barrel on Sunday from $73 a barrel on the eve of war) and Trump’s decision to relax sanctions on India for buying Russian oil will help bankroll the Russian war machine. The U.S. is also rapidly burning through limited stockpiles of missiles, especially air-defense interceptors, that are badly needed in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said more Patriot missiles were expended in just three days of fighting with Iran than have been used by Ukraine since 2022. Imagine how much Ukrainian energy infrastructure — and how many Ukrainian civilians — might have survived the winter if Trump had sent more Patriots to Ukraine rather than to what one journalist dubbed a “war of whim” with Iran.
It’s too soon to tell who will win the war between the United States and Iran. But, at this point, my money would be on Russia and China.
First no. Russia is losing a major ally because when this is over, Iran's oil will be controlled by the US.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, um, who's buying all this oil they're selling? Oh right, the same Europeans who complain that the US never did enough to help Ukraine are bankrolling Russia. Forgot to mention that.
Actually, China stands to be the loser, if the iranian regime is deposed. China is benefitting from cheap oil from iran, which helps artificially boost its economy. If the Shah or a democracy take back Iran, there will eb stability in the region, and a steady supply of oil and gas, which will also offset the russian bear hug. Sure, Russia always will benefit as it has massive oil and gas supplies, but the trick is to have a friendly , pro western supplier in the middle east.
ReplyDeletePutin isn’t winning on Iran. His world is disintegrating all around him
ReplyDeleteOne polite phone call with Trump doesn’t change the fundamentals: the Kremlin is powerless to save its erstwhile allies
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/10/putin-isnt-winning-in-iran-his-world-is-disintegrating-all/
For Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator, the Iran war must feel, to misquote Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, like the best of times and the worst of times.
On the one hand, oil prices have temporarily rocketed, helping to replenish Russia’s emptying coffers. The benchmark price for crude oil has nearly doubled since January, from about $60 (£45) a barrel to near $110 before falling back. Where it goes now is obviously dependent on whether the conflict continues – Trump says it is near complete, let’s see – and whether the Straits of Hormuz, through which a third of the world’s oil moves, is open.
While there is a current Western-imposed cap of $44 a barrel on the Russian oil price, it applies only when using Western banks, insurance and tankers. To avoid this cap, Putin uses his “shadow fleet”, an armada of about 1,200 ships, the largest such covert operation in maritime history. Even selling at a discount, Russian oil should currently fetch $80 a barrel from deliveries to India and China. Not paying for insurance or even for the upkeep of the often-unsafe vessels may make Russia another $5-$6 per barrel. Every little helps.
But this boon is dwarfed by the downsides of the war in Iran for Putin. His dreams of building an alternative alliance system to counter the West are being dismantled, one dictatorship at a time, by Donald Trump, who has been treating him as if he were an irrelevance on a par with Sir Keir Starmer.
Putin is in trouble and only survives because of his ruthlessness. His 2 week war to conquer Ukraine has killed millions of his soldiers and drained his army's resources. Now he loses his strongest central Asian ally. He has failed at everything since launching his war and the only thing keeping the country afloat is Russian oil that the Europeans are buying.
DeleteThat article goes on to point out other areas where his influence is waning - Syria - lost, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc and he is losing out to China. Unable to really enter this arena in iran. He may have a short term benefit from oil if sanctions are lifted, but he would also be helping out Europe on gas prices and inflation.
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