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Some various thoughts about the whole thing with Iran. My apologies if much of this was already discussed before by others in previous Culture War threads.
What worries me about is to what extent Russia can prop up Iranian anti-ship capabilities cheaply. It would be very much in Russia's interests to keep the strait closed as long as possible, it harms their enemies and helps Russia. Every air defense capability sent to the gulf is one not sent to Ukraine. Buying Russian oil and propping up Russia becomes the lesser evil compared to surrendering to Iran. They don't need to give the Mullahs the bomb or supply their whole war effort, just keep a trickle of drones and missiles coming in to prevent a total degradation of Iranian launch capabilities. Keep Hormuz' legs crossed, and the more both sides destroy more oil infrastructure the more the price premium Russian oil will demand for months or years afterward.
I think the two complications for Russia in helping Iran are as follows:
The Russian government's actions over the course of the last decade show that it values having friendly relations with Israel and the Arab Gulf States even while having hostile relations with the United States. I don't know to what extent this policy is motivated by geopolitics and to what extent it is motivated by shady financial interests of the Russian elite. In the case of Israel, the friendly relations are also probably motivated in part by the fact that just like America, Russia has many Jewish elites, and that Israel has many Jews from a Russian background.
Russia can ship things to Iran across the Caspian Sea without the ships being attacked. However, the US/Israel have very good surveillance and spying capacity, so they can probably accurately target that stuff as soon as gets into Iranian hands. This is similar to how things work in the Ukraine war, where the Russians don't bomb supplies while they are in NATO countries (with the possible exception of some alleged sabotage operations), but as soon as the supplies cross the border into Ukraine, Russia feels free to target them.
One darkly humorous part of the whole China/Russia/Iran is how each of them very clearly wish they had different allies and aren't exactly shy about it. China always hedging between Russia/EU and Iran/Sunnis/Israelis, Iran originally preferring European companies over Chinese companies, and the above behavior from Russia. Rumors of Axis 2.0 are overstated.
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Zero. Russian Naval Warfare have always been a joke. Shipping from Russia to Tehran is hard. And you need to actually train people. Which takes time. So they probably don't have much to give, will have hard time bringing it in and by the time iranians are ready to use it will be over one way or another.
It's not difficult to ship things to Tehran. Russians can and do regularly ship lots of things down the Volga River, across the Caspian Sea, and into Amiribad or Anzali. Recently, in the last few years Russia and Iran have drastically increased the facilities and volume of trade on the Caspian Sea.
And you don't need to train anyone. You can just have Russia soldiers manning the equipment, just like they did and have done in proxy wars for a long time using whatever schemes like "mercenaries" and whatever else to cover it up, e.g., the pilots flying Migs in Vietnam were regularly Russians and the people manning AD in Vietnam were regularly Russians and they were a big reason why B-52 were being shredded and why Operation Linebacker II was the last operation Linebacker.
Not that I think the Iranians would do that; agreeing to use Russian weapons means Russian conditions and Iran already watched Syria be destroyed because it relied on Russia and Russia allowed it to bleed until it was rotten from the inside out.
If you are willing to walk on the seabed probably. But the moment you raise your head above the water there will be a friendly tomahawk or something similar waiting for you. Iran has zero opsec.
No, not really. The US is not going to attack a Russian ship on the Caspian Sea.
The main way the US/Israel would do something clandestine would be using Azerbaijan, but everything said about the fragile nature of the Iranian government is actually true about the Azerbaijan government and it would be easy for Iran to obliterate their oil facilities which would topple that government, something which Russia likely wouldn't oppose, and something the Iranians have already threatened if the Azeris allow their territory to be used again.
And even if that wasn't true, it wouldn't meaningfully stop trade to Iran.
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