... being a junior partner can lead to being held hostage to a major player’s game
The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran has reached its first critical juncture. It can be characterised as an attempt at a crushing, disarming strike. The targets ... ... suggest the following preliminary balance of gains and losses for the key participants.
Ivan Timofeev:
The Iranian Crisis and Russia: Seven Lessons
Israel
The country is at the forefront of the military operation against Iran. For Israel, the attack on ...
The situation surrounding Iran fosters a kind of fatalism among all parties—a mind-set that risks defining the geopolitical climate for years to come
... ... cost of the current invasion proves prohibitive for all parties involved. The situation offers several important lessons for Russia.
Ivan Timofeev:
Military Operation Against Iran: A Realistic Scenario?
Lesson 1: Sanctions are followed by the use of ...
Strategically, Russia has little to gain and a lot to lose in case the crisis goes deeper
In the early morning of June 24 US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran after twelve days of intense airstrikes. The United States itself actively participated in this escalation cycle by hitting three major Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan on June 22. Though the American leader claimed that the ...
... regime in Syria, as far as one can judge, came as a complete surprise for all external actors, Moscow including. Of course, many Russian area studies experts for a long time warned about the growing economic and social problems in Syria, as well as about ... ... continuation of October 2023. Without the successful Israeli efforts to weaken both the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the swift implosion of the Syrian regime would have been impossible. However, the likely impact of the regime change in ...
Will Russia continue its “business as usual” aimed at maintaining the existing status-quo or will it be forced to review and to revise its positions towards Israel, Palestinians, Iran and its main partners in the Arab world?
The spectacular comeback of Donald Trump to the White House will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the US overall international positioning, as well as on specific dimensions of the US approaches to ...
... fierce hostilities in the West Bank, then by a large-scale border clash between Israel and Lebanon, and, finally, by an Israeli–Iranian war, which had been looming on the political horizon for years and was literally just a step away, with the likely involvement ... ... leadership, not without reason, draws parallels between Palestinian radicals and the Muslim Brotherhood movement (banned in Russia) at home, which has been driven deep underground, but was, alongside Israel, among the founding fathers of Hamas. Damascus ...
... recently made frequent public declarations of their readiness to start the process of normalizing bilateral relations soon, with Russia as a mediator. Syrian President Bashar Assad, while receiving Russian President's Special Envoy on Syria Alexander Lavrentiev ... ... crisis, a tangled web of foreign policy contradictions has emerged between Ankara and Damascus due to the involvement of Russia, Iran, the United States and the GCC monarchies in the conflict. These were almost immediately compounded by domestic political ...
... this did not happen during our stay in the West Bank.
And what issues were discussed during the visit?
We had a meeting at the Russian Mission to the PNA with the Mission’s head, Gocha Levanovich Buachidze, who warmly received us. He briefed us on the ... ... intensifying hostilities? Opinions differ on this point. Hezbollah is one of Israel’s main adversaries, all the more so because Iran is backing it. That being said, Hezbollah is deeply integrated into Lebanon’s political landscape. It is not a full-fledged ...
... direction has not stopped.
Second, while the focus of geopolitical confrontation between the West (the U.S. and its EU allies) and Russia has shifted from the Caucasus to the Middle East and Ukraine since 2014-2015, this region remains among the most turbulent ... ... mode of how Karabakh and Chechnya got incorporated significantly
differ
.
The change in the status quo also contributed to Iran’s notable invigoration. Two Eurasian giants, China and India, have also adopted a higher profile in the Caucasus. With ...
... greatest of these changes is the China-mediated rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Given that these countries are regional “centers of power”, their new and improved relations may help reduce regional ... ... could have been prompted by changes in Iran’s relations with other countries, especially its evolving cooperation with China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. If any agreement has been reached (which is currently too early to judge), it would only boost Iran’s ...
