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I’m curious what Russia and China will do behind the scenes, and what they’re currently doing without our knowledge. They must realize that the war provides the chance to get anything they want from America if it continues to impact Israel. By backing Iran they may be able to secure Ukraine, Taiwan, maybe even Alaska and Hawaii (who knows?). They have the ultimate Trump Card — pun intended — if they are able to replenish and support the Iranian missile threat against Israel, as this would compel Israel to pressure the Americans they control into making enormous concessions to end the war. This is, unfortunately and obviously, the problem with having such a close relationship with a rogue regime, while allowing their loyalists to accrue so much wealth and power in your homeland.
It's already been reported that Russia is giving intelligence to Iran to help kill American soldiers. I'm a bit worried that Trump will try to do some quid pro quo with Putin cutting off intelligence from Ukraine in exchange for Russia stopping with Iran.
I think the US's relationship with Israel is entirely too close, and we've somehow made their strategic problems into ours. It's absurd that we're basically fighting their war for them. America would be well served by breaking off the special relationship and treating them as any other democracy -- friendly sure, but not whatever the heck is going on now.
That said, the notion that the US would give up Alaska or Hawaii is not a serious one.
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Sir, I am normally very in favor of your takes but my autism compells me to say that there is a less than 0% chance that Hawaii or Alaska are on the table here.
This war isn't existential to the USA, and even in some hypothetical WW3 the USA would rather nuclear apocalypse the world than give up any of their soil (not blaming the USA here, Russia/China have the same stance, it's how you make MAD credible).
I am curious too. I think "not much" right now. I have a pretty high level of confidence in the USA security/spying apparatus in their ability to find stuff out. Less for China, but large weapon shipments are very hard to find (especially once exploded drone/missile components start raining down on GCC).
I think Russia was shipping some treats to Iran via the Caspian, but Israel hit the boat (I assume it was Iranian flagged).
The problem is, and credit to Trump here, there is a very credible threat of American reprisals for arming Iran.
Russia is having a great time with Iran being the center of attention. Every patriot missile that blows up over Tel-Aviv can't be used in Kiyv. And the massive deficiency means they'll be fighting a lot of other countries for them.
China has less to lose (although they don't want another trade war). But they also have been loving the "do nothing, win" strategy against Trump, which is quite effective. They look stable and trustworthy (they aren't) in contrast to the USA geopolitics shitshow. Put another way "Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.'"
As an aside, I'm still deeply confused what they thought they were doing with "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but they seem to have smartened up.
My impression was always that the wolf warrior stuff was entirely for domestic consumption, propelled perhaps a little further than intended by a small number of true believers.
That makes a lot of sense, because it was a pretty resounding failure of diplomacy at a time where China was starting to look a little less scary and a lot more stable when compared to Trump 1
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