The war in Iran is in its 22nd day, and there is no telling when it is going to end. Russia is still fighting Ukraine, a war now in its fourth year.
Until US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the war in Iran, the world spoke of little else than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That war that has claimed around half a million lives and injured three times as many now seems like a long-forgotten incident.
Eyes are now on Iran, whose people must have wondered when the peace discussions ended, and a decision to go to war was made.
Putin Is Selling
The instigator of the Russian-Ukraine war is the iron-handed man Vladimir Putin, one whose word is law in Russia. He is a person whom the US President Donald Trump seems to admire, mainly because his own people and his neighbors fear him. However, if by starting the war in Iran, Donald Trump wanted to appear as strong as Putin, he certainly miscalculated.
His surprise invasion of Iran has only disgraced him in the eyes of the international community and caused unnecessary economic stress in the world. He has also managed to give Putin a breather and some room to make an extra dollar.
Word has it that Russia and China have been covertly assisting Iran in the form of aerial surveillance and intelligence. That is apparently how Iran has managed to identify particular sites of interest with precision for war purposes, mainly in Israel and the Gulf states. Obviously, Putin does not want Iran to crumble. He also knows that Trump’s ego is too big; he cannot withdraw from the war with Iran, as long as Iran still appears strong.
When oil prices rise, as they have since the war began, every oil supplier benefits, and Russia is one of them. So, now Russia is reaping higher revenues from its normal oil supplies. In addition, sanctions on its oil trade have been eased to mitigate the global oil shortage caused by the war in Iran. An expert at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CERA), Luke Wickenden, says the high world oil prices have given Russia a lifeline.
Overall, trade must be booming for Russia and helping improve its economy. An improved economy means less domestic pressure on the Russian president, whose people have been suffering the negative effects of the Ukraine war. By extension, developments in the war in Iran are bound to improve Putin’s political standing at home.
Neither Trump nor NATO can threaten Putin.
The manner in which the US-Israel duo attacked Iran on February 28th, 2026, was unorthodox and went against international convention. No emergency would have caused the US president to declare war without conferring with NATO.
Besides, the war seems to be another parallel of the Iraqi war, where the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were never found. This time, the alleged accumulated reserve of nuclear weapons is nowhere to be found, which is not surprising, as the US Congress had been told Iran did not have it.
This means that the US has lost the moral authority to condemn any future action of aggression by Iran, Russia, or any other country. To the world, the Trump administration has lost face and put the US in a position where it cannot justifiably condemn any other country behaving badly.
At the same time, it will be very difficult for the US to convince its NATO allies to confront another country, whether or not that country is a NATO member. For instance, Russia is not a member of NATO, but it can cite this unwarranted attack on Iran if ever NATO wants to intervene in its aggressive actions.
Already, Putin’s regime has managed to occupy some sections of Ukraine and expects the residents there to participate in the September 2026 Duma elections. Duma is Russia’s lower legislative house.
There is no telling if Putin now feels emboldened enough to try to annex another country, such as Estonia, Lithuania, or Latvia. Before his term ends in 2030, he might decide to invade other countries whose main populations speak ethnic Russian.
As the war between Iran and the US-Israel duo persists, it continues to cost Iran and the entire Gulf region civilian lives, infrastructure, functioning oil fields, and gas refineries. Yet, the less monstrous Putin’s actions in Ukraine appear, even as his unprovoked war continues to claim innocent lives and destroy Ukrainian infrastructure.