Trump’s move will increase global demand for Russian oil, which will help Moscow finance its war on Ukraine, according to Markov. Under intensifying global demand for oil and emboldened by Trump’s sanctions relief, a more confident Russia will sell its oil without any discounts, making the country richer, says Markov.
Under the economic pressure of the Iran war, big energy customers like China and India might also feel they cannot rely on the Gulf, moving toward an economic course of signing long-term energy agreements with Moscow, adds the Russian analyst.
While some see Trump’s sanctions relief as another sign of Western division on how to support Kiev against Moscow, Ignatov says that the current US administration differs from Europeans on the Ukraine war, as it believes that sanctions against Putin’s state have “pretty much reached their limit” and a diplomatic solution is a better path.
Related
The Trump administration doesn’t believe that “sanctions can change Russia’s behaviour,” says Ignatov, emphasising that sanctions relief for now is limited to one month.
“Asian countries would find a way to circumvent the sanctions to buy Russian oil if they wanted to,” the analyst adds.
Prior to the sanctions relief for Moscow, the US granted a waiver allowing India, the world’s most populous country, to buy Russian oil. Notably, India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel several days before the joint Israeli-American attacks on Iran.
“Washington wants to reassure the markets and believes that oil prices will remain high for only a short time. Russia, by the way, also thinks so for now,” Ignatov says, referring to contested dynamics of the Iran war.
Boosting the Russian military
The Iran war will also make a significant impact on Ukrainian military supplies, from the Patriot air-defence system to long-range and short-range missiles, which have been provided to Kiev either directly by the US or through European states.
“We are burning PAC-3 Patriot missiles, which Ukrainians are begging for,” said John Mearsheimer, a leading American academic on international conflicts, referring to the extreme use of American air-defence systems to intercept Iranian missiles across Israel and Gulf territories targeted by Tehran’s long-range ballistic missiles.
Due to the Iran war, the US is burning through large stockpiles of missiles and air-defence systems, which the country can not produce on short notice, as all signs signal a protracted war in the Gulf if a ceasefire has not been ensured by third-party states.
The US has no “military capacity” to supply the Ukrainian military with weapons it needs, says Markov. “The result will be that the Ukrainian army will be weaker due to the Iran war,” he says.
As Israel, the US and Iran continue to engage in tit-for-tat attacks across the Middle East, the war will also increase demand for Russian defence systems, says Markov, adding that Moscow’s air-defence – like its S-400s – is “probably the best in the world.”
In this sense, the war in Iran will also boost the Russian military-industrial complex, the analyst says.
In light of recent revelations that Russia might have shared intelligence with Iran in helping it target high-value US assets in the Middle East, the US might think twice in terms of its intelligence sharing with Kiev against Moscow, according to Markov.
This will also potentially decrease Ukrainian leverage against Russia, he adds.
‘No regime change’
At the beginning of the Ukraine war, when Russian forces failed to take over Kiev withdrawing from cities like Kharkiv with heavy losses, many Western officials and analysts were early pointing out that the Kremlin’s statecraft under Putin was going down.
Despite Western projections, Russia has endured its losses and has been able to make gains in eastern Ukraine since then. With the Iran war, prospects of any regime change in Moscow seem to be a far-fetched objective.
Related
If the joint US-Israeli attacks can not facilitate a regime change in Tehran, which has been under Western sanctions since the 1979 revolution, how can the Western bloc imagine a regime change in Moscow, asks Markov.
It’s clear that US regime change efforts in Iran, which has its own unique political institutions embedded in a long history, are not successful currently, he says.
Then, it will be even more difficult to imagine a regime change in Russia, which also has a strong political and military presence across Eurasia for centuries, he adds.
“We’re not winning against Iran. We’re not winning. We’re sending a message that we’re a bunch of fools that we started a war we can’t win,” said Mearsheimer in his recent interview.
“We didn’t have the required military forces to achieve any of the objectives that we were floating, and we had no plan. What does this tell the Chinese and what does it tell the Russians?”
“It tells them that we are incompetent.”