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The Iran war already has a winner

The spiraling conflict is a lifeline for Vladimir Putin.

There are already clear losers from the war in Iran: The battered Iranian regime itself, the civilians under heavy bombardment in Iran and Lebanon, the Gulf countries’ whose reputation as a stable safe haven have been shattered by missiles and drones, the people everywhere — but particularly in the world’s poorest countries — impacted by high fuel and fertilizer prices and disrupted supply chains.

For the moment, it’s also not going very well for the Trump administration, which, despite some early US military success, finds itself stuck in an unpopular and costly war without a clear exit strategy. What the war will mean for others, from Israel to Iranian society, is still too early to say.

But there is one clear winner of the war so far: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This is somewhat counterintuitive. Iran is an important strategic ally to a country with few close friends these days. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the third Russian-backed leader — after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — removed from power in recent months. Putin has strongly condemned the war and the killing of Khamenei.

But to the extent that Iran’s plight is a geopolitical setback for the Kremlin, it’s outweighed by the benefits of expensive oil, weakened sanctions, diverted munitions, and a distracted Western alliance. And it all happened at a moment right when the Russian leader, who faces economic upheaval at home and a continued bloody stalemate in Ukraine, needed a boost the most.

“In the short run, at least, Putin won the jackpot on this one,” said Angela Stent, an expert on Russia’s foreign policy at Georgetown University and the American Enterprise Institute.

The Iran war is not a video game

Turning the taps back on

Accounting for about a third of Russia’s government revenues, oil and gas are the lifeblood of the Russian economy, and therefore of its war effort in Ukraine as well. It’s not a coincidence that global crude prices were rising to record highs in the 2000s at the same........

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