As the war in the Middle East spreads and intensifies, the one in Ukraine continues. While geographically some 2,500km (1,600 miles) apart, the consequences of US president Donald Trump’s latest military adventure for the Russian war against Ukraine will be acutely felt across several areas. In the short term, the Kremlin will probably feel emboldened to double down on its aggression, but this is unlikely to shift the dial significantly towards Russian victory in the long term.
The targeted killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by a precision US strike would have reminded the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, of his reportedly “apoplectic” reaction to the killing of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011. Comments on social media from the likes of far-right Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin, who posted, that “one by one, our allies are being systematically destroyed”, and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who alleged that the “talks with Iran were just a cover”, are unlikely to have steadied Putin’s nerves.
The Russian leader’s fears about being next after a string of US successes targeting foreign leaders may have been played up somewhat by the western media, but they are not completely unfounded. Putin continues to walk a fine line between paranoia and his outrage over the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, which he condemned in a condolence letter to the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, as a “cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law” but did not mention Trump or the US as the culprits.
