As they launch an air campaign against Iran, do Trump and Netanyahu realize what they owe to Ukraine? It is because Russia is being held in check and exhausted by Ukraine that it has lost much of its capacity to cause harm in the world. It can no longer do much for the mullahs’ Iran. Yet Iran is a loyal ally within the Moscow-Tehran-Pyongyang-Beijing axis. It has delivered large quantities of Shahed killer drones, before allowing Russia to manufacture them itself. There were fears that, in return, Iran had received technological assistance from Russia to build long-range ballistic missiles, but there is no evidence that this assistance has been successful. Military experts are skeptical about Iran’s capabilities in this area; there is uncertainty about the number of missiles Iran has, but it is almost certain that its missiles cannot reach beyond Israel. This is an existential threat to the Jewish state, but no one—except Donald Trump—believes that Iran is capable of building and launching intercontinental missiles.
Russia’s pitiful silence on the Iranian crisis reflects its inability to take any action to help its old ally. This should be a cause for concern for Russia’s other allies.
By launching his all-out war against Ukraine, Putin thought he would unleash chaos around the world, boost the enemies of the Global West, and push them toward adventurism (several African states are already regretting their decisions). He has fueled chaos in the Middle East. In particular, he gave Hamas the green light for the pogrom of October 7, 2023, apparently outflanking Iran on its left: Iran was unaware of its Gaza proxy’s plans until the eve of the attack. In 2024, Donald Trump’s victory was another win for Russia: Trump is an agent of global chaos but he is not prepared to bow down to the Kremlin and maintains a ruthless balance of power, particularly in Cuba, Venezuela, and the Arctic. He shares Putin’s hatred of Ukraine, with the difference that we are not sure why Trump hates Ukraine and how far his hatred will go, whereas Putin’s hatred is based on clearly stated goals that explain why it is genocidal.
But after a year of troubled idyll with Putin, Trump’s perilous campaign against Iran is turning a new page. We don’t know what Trump’s next whim will be, or how far his seesawing between Russia and China will take him, but we can bet that nothing good will come of it for Putin. Would Trump have launched this campaign if his Russian “partner” had not been reduced to impotence? There is reason to doubt it.
Thanks to Ukraine’s resistance, Putin, the entrepreneur of chaos, is a victim of his own making: not only has he failed in Ukraine, but this failure is paralyzing his grand global game; he is no longer able to maintain his arms markets, let alone provide military assistance to his allies. He hoped to take the lead in the war against the West, compensating for his economic weakness vis-à-vis China with the prestige of the commander-in-chief. Alas, the big Chinese tomcat is doing nothing against Moscow but is biding its time and taking advantage, particularly on the oil markets, of the exhaustion of the Russian economy. China will not even need to occupy the Russian Far East to recover, de facto, through the exhaustion of its adversary, the territories it has been claiming for a century, Vladivostok and Sakhalin. Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier shows in this issue of Desk Russie how much the Eurasian worldview is the foundation of Russia’s “grand strategy.” However, this grandiose and stubborn vision of Russia’s destiny, neither European nor Eastern but transcending both, may be collapsing on all sides: in the West, of course, thanks to the heroic mobilization of the Ukrainian people, and in the East, thanks to China’s hypocritical patience.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Trump will understand and acknowledge what he owes to Ukraine and repay it, any more than Netanyahu, who is obsessed with the Russian-born electorate that provides him with votes and investments.
Lecturer at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas. Teaches philosophy and political science.