The wars of misconstrued opportunities and bad choices

The shock waves from the new Gulf war are spreading wider and growing stronger, and overlap with resonance from the four-year-long Ukraine war. These wars are clearly dissimilar in the geography, correlation of forces and character of combat operations. What they have in common is a shaky rationale for starting and unrealistic goal-setting. Both are wars of choice rather than necessity, and President Donald Trump’s assertion of an “imminent threat” from Iran is no more convincing than President Vladimir Putin’s perennial claim that he had no other choice but to invade Ukraine.

The decision-making on starting these wars is shaped by the personalistic character of governance, in which subordinates and advisers are eager to supply the “decider” with the information he wants to consume. A common flaw in war planning in such whatever-the-boss-orders war rooms is underestimation of the enemy’s strength and will to resist.

We know a great deal more about the blunders and miscalculations in the Russian war-making than about the yet-to-be-revealed shortcomings in the US designs for air war, and comparisons might appear to be far-fetched, but they may still provide some glimmers of analytical light in the proverbial “fog of war”. For once, oil and natural gas export is a key variable in the complex equations of both wars, as Russia and Iran are major producers for the global market, while the USA happens to be simultaneously the top producer and the top consumer. At the start of the 2020s, Russia’s position on the oil market was so prominent that the start of the war in February 2022 pushed the benchmark price from USD 75-80 to USD 120, but volatility decreased in 2023, and since 2024, the downward trend has become prevalent. In the first days of the new Gulf war, the surge in oil prices was moderate, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for tanker traffic is certain to accelerate the rise.

The windfall of petro-revenues helped Russia to withstand the enforcement of unexpectedly severe economic sanctions in 2022, and then ensured the return to strong growth envisaged by the policy of “military Keynesianism”. That impulse lasted for two years and by the end of 2025, it was completely exhausted, so in the last couple of months, the Russian government has become desperate about the depth of budget deficit and the maturing trend of stagflation. With the first Israeli missile hitting Tehran, this desperation has turned to new hopes of a new increase of oil export revenues, even if tankers of Russian “shadow fleet” are seized increasingly often, even by such law-abiding states as Belgium. Putin’s relief is Trump’s headache as American drivers encounter higher prices at the pump, always a major factor in the US domestic politics. Ups and downs at the stock exchange have always been a major influence in Trump’s policy decisions, so his assumption that the Iran campaign could last four-five weeks is set to be tested by the negative reaction of investors and speculators.

Another mutually reinforcing impact of the two wars is the erosion and fragmentation of the global governance, with the UN Security Council being paralyzed into inaction in both cases. The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, but the resolution on the fourth anniversary of the invasion was more carefully worded and gathered less support. The breakdown of the wider structures of the European security system caused by the Ukraine war produced a strong momentum for Western unity in the framework of US-led coalition supporting Ukraine. This momentum was exhausted during four years to such degree that the idea of “Global West” appears as far-fetched as the notion of “Global South”.

Russia was deeply concerned about the potency of the Western coalition and sought to counter it by investing maximum possible efforts in building two alternative structures: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS. Iran joined the SCO in July 2023 and the BRICS in January 2024, and Moscow sought to utilize these organizations for deflecting the growing US pressure. Nikolai Patrushev, the chair of Russian Maritime Board and Putin’s long-time loyalist, argued for a show of BRICS naval power, and several combat ships from Russia and China indeed joined the Iranian navy in an exercise in mid-February 2026. This show of flag failed to deter the US operation, and the BRICS, as well as the SCO, has remained “missing in action” in the first week of the new Gulf war.

Yet another odd similarity between the two wars can be found in the interplay between the combat operations and peace talks, which are on the US side conducted by the same duo of negotiators: Trump’s old friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. From the narrow focus of the US-Iranian talks in Geneva, Russian experts deduced the probability of a limited first US strike targeting the nuclear assets – and were astounded by the real volume of the attack. Even mainstream Moscow commentators now argue that the Trump administration tends to use negotiations as camouflage for the military preparations and that Russia must treat the peace talks in Geneva accordingly.

What produced a particularly painful shock in Moscow was the US-Israeli decision on eliminating the top leadership in Iran in order to facilitate regime change. While Russia forcefully pursues the goal of regime change in Ukraine, it has never targeted President Volodymyr Zelensky or aimed to disrupt any visit of Western leaders to Kyiv. The story about Ukrainian drone attack on the Valdai presidential residence was exposed as a crude fabrication, but it revealed Putin’s obsession with personal safety, which is certain to be aggravated by the reflections on the sudden death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family.

The indirect but strong interconnection between the two devastating wars is set to evolve, and it is notable that during the fist week of the Gulf war, the intensity of Russian attack in Donbas and missile/drone strike on Ukrainian cities has significantly decreased. Neither war can end with a victory to one side, and the possibility of a fair and stable peace deal is as miniscule for Kyiv as it is for Tehran. It is not impossible, nevertheless, that a cessation of hostilities in the necessarily short Gulf war would produce a pause in the tragically long Ukraine war.

The costs of bad choices have reached such enormous levels that trasactionalism, with all its unsavory purposes and cynical bargaining, may help the stake-holders in restoration a modicum of stability to tame the war-mongers.

• Pavel K Baev is a Research Professor at PRIO
• This text was first published by Global Panorama, Online