site banner

Transnational Thursday for June 19, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

US/Israel/Iran/Russia.

It seems quite conspicuous how on one hand US engagement with the Israel/Iran war, widely seen as something that is very personal for Trump for whatever reason, coincides with a much-lamented acceleration of the softening of his stance on Russia; and on the other hand Russia is also conspicuously sitting on the fence regarding the conflict, despite their previous military collaboration with Iran and it being ostensibly natural for them to take this opportunity to set another trap for the Western coalition.

Do you figure it could be the case that Trump decided to buy Putin's neutrality on the matter by offering him at least a period of US stonewalling on further pro-Ukraine action? The null hypothesis I can think of is that Putin just independently appreciates that Israel has been reticent to support Ukraine directly so far, while Trump's rapprochement with Russia is just a natural continuation of his preexisting trajectory and not particularly connected to Iran.

being ostensibly natural for them to take this opportunity to set another trap for the Western coalition.

What kind of trap could they be setting? They have no military resources deployed there, and whatever they could ship is at complete mercy of Israel air force now that they have full aerial superiority. Nobody is trying to invade Iran on land, so Russia's favorite strategy of sending 10x people in and having 5x killed but still coming ahead on the numbers is pointless there. Not to mention even the most hardened Russian patriot would find confusing why exactly he must go and get killed by Israel in Iran and how it is vital for Mother Russia. Russia would gladly sell Iran any military equipment they could, but the things they are better at than Iran - e.g. air defense systems - are pretty useless by now, as existing ones have been destroyed and new ones are hard to deploy in any useful way in the middle of the war where the enemy owns the air.

On the other hand, they have some very vulnerable projects - like Busher reactor - which are technically not military, but given how Iran already hit many civilian targets in Israel, the case can easily be made for it to be infrastructure and thus fair game. So far, Russia made the opposite deal with Israel - we stay out of it and limit ourselves to blowing hot air, and you don't bomb the shit that makes us money. Since Busher, as far as I know, has little military value, Israel is fine with leaving it alone for now.

On the third hand, is Iran manages to really piss of Israel and it will authorize taking out Iran's oil facilities, guess who would be the only supplier of cheap oil to China. And who would benefit from the oil and gas prices inevitably raising.

So Russia is being very smart right now and doing exactly what is their best interest is - talking big game (in case ayatollahs pull through and there would be business to be done with them in the future) while not doing anything that would cause them to bear any costs. Trump has nothing to do with it - that kind of situation existed long before him, Russia had always been reluctant to mess with Israel directly, and Israel had always been willing to take Russia's interests into account as much as it is possible without hurting the main goals.