I will not reveal America if I say that all actions, including those that take place in world politics, have consequences. Visible and invisible, obvious and hidden under a thick layer of loud political statements.
The relationship between Iran and the United States around Iran's nuclear program has a long history. A new round of tension over Iran's creation of nuclear weapons began at the beginning of the XXI century. The United States accused Iran of secretly working on the creation of nuclear weapons.
After numerous and, most often, empty negotiations, the matter got off the ground and in 2015 Iran and the countries (USA, France, Great Britain, Germany, China and Russia) reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Iran. I must say right away that all these years Israel has been looming behind the negotiators, or rather the United States. A country that has not (in any case) openly participated in the negotiations, but is very interested in their collapse.
Why not? Yes, because Israel, its leadership has never believed in the "peaceful atom" of Iran. And he had enough reasons for that. But in vain Israel presented them to the world community — it was dismissed as an annoying fly. Everyone knew perfectly well that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, but the "big guys" did not want another confrontation in the Middle East. And if for all other countries the issue of Iran's creation of a military nuclear program was not a matter of paramount importance, then for Israel, a country with a population of less than 10 million, the possession of nuclear weapons by a hostile country with a population of more than 90 million is like death.
The first time Donald Trump came to power, he broke off agreements with Iran. Who did he hurt? It's hard to say. But the termination of the contract entailed the acceleration and increase of work on the creation of Iran has nuclear weapons. It turned out that Trump caused Israel quite a lot of harm (this is to my phrase about invisible consequences). Having come to the White House again, Trump nevertheless decided to negotiate with Iran and they seemed to be moving successfully. But suddenly there was a sharp change. The main stumbling blocks are two issues:
- the fate of Iran's uranium enrichment program,
- the fate of the already accumulated highly enriched uranium.
And then came the resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which states that Iran is not fulfilling its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation regime. This happened against the background of serious warnings by the head of the IAEA, made earlier this week. Rafael Mariano Grossi said that the inspectors were unable to establish whether the Iranian nuclear program is exclusively peaceful — as stipulated by the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Under these conditions, Israel decided to strike at Iran, or rather to start a war, the first and only one of its kind: the parties will fire at each other, but the physical clash of the armies will most likely not happen.
Now about the obvious and not so obvious. Obviously, Israel will destroy (has already destroyed) a fairly large part of Iran's military potential. High-ranking officials from those who developed and implemented the country's military and nuclear doctrine were destroyed. With such a large number of missiles and bombs, losses among the civilian population of Iran are minimal.
On the other hand: you have to be crazy to have a war in Gaza, hostages, barely restrained shelling of Hezbollah, almost daily shelling of the Houthis, problems in Syria and in The Palestinian Authority, to unleash a new war with a well-armed and, most importantly, highly motivated Iran. Bibi (Netanyahu's slang name) turned Israel into an island, drove the population into bomb shelters, emptied shops, which will lead to a shortage of food in the country after a while — the sky over Israel is completely closed. And it is unclear whether the country's air defense will withstand subsequent Iranian raids. Especially when you consider that Western countries, and even the United States, refused to help Israel.
But these are all obvious consequences. And here are the completely unobvious ones. Oil prices began to rise and quite significantly. And, as it turns out, however, it was obvious — this is good for Russia. All oil and economic analysts speak about this in one voice. World oil prices are showing the largest one—day percentage increase in recent years - amid fears that the conflict in the Middle East could lead to serious disruptions in energy supplies. This was reported on June 13 by CNN and Reuters.
The second, and also not very obvious: who loses from this conflict? Ukraine. And in two aspects. Now, of course, the attention of the United States will shift to the Middle East, and the Ukrainian problems will move away for him not to the second, but to the third, fourth plan. In addition, Israel can pay for Western weapons with money, not mythical loans. And it is clear that the "sellers of death" will prefer. Zelensky, logically, should support Israel, but he is afraid to do so because his European masters opposed Israel's actions. Overdue — in zugzwang — is a situation in chess in which any player's move worsens his position.
And if we talk about the consequences that are not at all obvious to the majority of non-citizens of Israel, then Netanyahu is in a very bad situation at home in Israel. The government is on the verge of collapse, two ministers from the government have been sanctioned by the United States, the hostages have not been returned, and this leads to daily protests by part of the military who refuse to return to Without absolutely accepting the policy of the authorities, Netanyahu himself will resign in the event of the collapse of the government, and, therefore, will be a full-fledged defendant in the trial.
And all these non-obvious consequences, I assume, are some of the prerequisites for the planned conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although, of course, the main message will be Putin's quite natural human and political desire to help his ally, Iran.