Why Iran is Also Attacking Ukraine Now

only a few months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine the kremlin's war machine was already beginning to bog down and run out of gas sometimes literally Ukrainian resistance was far more ferocious than moscow's military planners had initially anticipated Russian casualties were beginning to pile up in the tens of thousands while Russia's inventories of ammunition guns tanks and trucks were all getting rapidly depleted as the front line demanded ever greater amounts of resources be burned in order to keep stable by the end of 2022 the front line had more or less stabilized along a front that has largely remained static up to the production of this video but the ukrainians possess an advantage that the Russians inherently do not they have the vast nearly bottomless resources of the American and Western European military-industrial complexes behind them as more tanks guns artillery and Munitions produced in Europe and the United States within factories the Russians cannot possibly destroy continue to pour into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers and partisans since Russia ultimately has more than three times Ukraine's population to pull Manpower from The Invasion is gradually evolved into a brutal War of Attrition between Russia's better ability to replace losses in Manpower with Ukraine's better ability to replace losses in equipment and supplies largely cut off and isolated from trade with the outside world after unprecedented Western Financial sanctions the Russian government has found it increasingly challenging to replace their losses in tanks aircraft artillery and especially microchips and other Advanced weapon systems to continue fighting on an effective 21st century War but by the end of 2022 one country had stepped up above all the others to begin supplying the Russian war machine with much of the equipment it needs to continue staying in the fight Iran as the winter season of 2022-23 set in hundreds of Iranian manufactured Kamikaze drones known as the Shahed 136 suddenly began appearing across the battlefield in Ukraine under Russian service the Russians would go on to use swarms of these relatively inexpensive iranian-made drones to help bombard Ukrainian civilian infrastructure into Rubble by overwhelming their air defenses with sheer numbers I a tactic which eventually contributed to roughly half of the Ukrainian electric grid getting knocked offline in a deliberate Campaign Of Terror but it's not just the drones that the Iranians are actively sending to assist the Russians either the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps better known as the irgc is the unconventional asymmetric and ideological military wing of the Iranian armed forces and by the end of 2022 they had deployed many of their own military advisors and Soldiers on the ground within the Russian occupied sections of Ukraine and in addition to the hundreds of Kamikaze drones the Iranians have also been providing the Russians with much needed ammunition artillery shells ballistic missiles and body armor to help keep their inventory stable and to help keep them fighting on for longer the Iranian regime has gone all in on militarily supporting the Russian side during the invasion of Ukraine in much the same way that the Americans and Europeans are actively supporting the Ukrainian side but the growing cooperation between Moscow and Tehran extends far beyond the borders of Ukraine and the world may just be witnessing the birth of a full-blown Russian Iranian military Alliance that could Define the 21st century in the region in many ways this makes perfect geopolitical sense to both sides of the moment in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine the Russian Federation received an unprecedented hail storm of financial sanctions from Western and Western Alliance countries from around the world to the point where it suddenly became the most heavily sanctioned regime on the planet with more than triple the amount of sanctions levied against it as the world's second most heavily sanctioned country Iran the two countries ended 2022 and enter 2023 as the number one and number two most financially isolated Pariah states in the world and so they each have few Alternatives right now to trade with than each other as a consequence Russian exports to Iran have risen by more than 27 since the invasion of Ukraine began while Iranian exports to Russia have risen by more than 10 percent Russia has since agreed to invest more than 40 billion dollars into helping develop Iran's natural gas infrastructure whether the Russians even helped the Iranians launch a satellite into orbit last August that the Pentagon claims it's helping Iran's drones operate over Ukraine while extremely ideologically opposed at the national level Iran and Russia also ultimately view themselves as sharing the same common enemy in the form of the United States and the collective West Iran and Russia have for years now fought together on the same side to prop up the regime of Bashar al-assad in Syria and ever fearful of a potential future conflict with the United States and the Persian Gulf region the Ukrainian Battlefield grants the Iranians a valuable opportunity to test their own military hardware on the Russian side against American supplied Hardware on the Ukrainian side so they can analyze how they stack up against each other at the same time Iran and Russia both complement each other militarily extremely well the Iranians are capable of supplying the Russians with a lot of the ammunition drones Rockets missiles and body armor that they need to keep fighting in Ukraine while the Russians can and now actively are supplying the Iranians with some of their advanced fighter jets hello copters and air defense systems like the s-300 and s-400 that the Iranians need to defend their nuclear weapons research facilities from potential Israeli or American airstrikes there's even the potential for the Russians to one day go even further and do what was up until recently completely Unthinkable assist the Iranian regime with developing their own nuclear weapon but Iran and Russia's growing Alliance and partnership in Ukraine and elsewhere today in the 2020s is a pretty strange aberration in history because much like Russia and China Russia and Iran have pretty much been major Rivals and bitter enemies for nearly their entire histories and still today just beneath the surface of their partnership historic tensions Fester after centuries of conflict Mutual mistrust and betrayals for you see ever since diplomatic relations were first established centuries ago between the Russians and the Persians they have fought multiple Wars against each other largely over their competing influences and interests around the Caspian Sea Central Asia and the caucus Us by the turn of the 19th century the khajar dynasty of Iran controlled pretty much the entirety of modern day Iran's borders with the addition of pretty much the entirety of the South Caucasus comprising the modern day states of Armenia and Azerbaijan and much of Georgia along with the now Russian territory of Dagestan the Iranians have controlled much of these territories for centuries but beginning in 1804 the Russian Empire began invading and advancing into the area and conquering it in two separate treaties signed in 1813 and 1828 the Russians conquered and annexed the territories from Iran that would later make up modern-day Azerbaijan Armenia Georgia and Dagestan territories that would remain a part of Russia and the Soviet Union for nearly the next two centuries until the 1990s when the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed but Russian influence in this formerly Iranian part of the world continues to persist Dagestan remains a core russian territory to this day while South osettia and Georgia remains under de facto Russian military occupation and Armenia accounts itself as a member of moscow's csto military Alliance and for the past two centuries ever since Persian and Iranian nationalists have lamented the loss of the South Caucasus to the Russians as a national embarrassment in humiliation but it would be far from the final time that the Russians and Iranians would come directly to blows across the 19th century one of the British Empire's primary geopolitical goals was to block the Russian Empire from expanding further across Central Asia towards British India and towards the Indian Ocean where the Russian Navy could theoretically use newly acquired ports to challenge the existing Naval supremacy of Britain within the Indian Ocean and so in 1907 the two colonial empires reached a compromise by effectively carving up Iran into mutual spheres of influence with the northern half falling under Russian influence in the Southeastern fourth falling under British influence with a neutral buffer zone in between keeping them separated naturally the Iranians themselves were not invited to participate in the negotiations and their sovereignty continued to be undermined by Saint Petersburg in London during the second world war after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union the British and the Soviets jointly invaded Iran from the North and the South in 1941 and toppled the reigning Shaw in order to keep the country open for Allied supply routes bringing critical War materials up to support the Soviet Eastern Front the Soviets would remain occupying parts of the country for the next five years until 1946 but the Iran that emerged under the reign of the previous Shaw's Sun Muhammad Reza palavi entered into the following Cold War as an autocratic but staunchly pro-american and pro-western state firmly opposed to the spread of Communism any further in the Middle East for decades across the 1960s and 70s Imperial Iran effectively functioned as America's policeman in the Middle East guarding the Persian Gulf in its supply of half the world's known reserves of oil from any encroachment by the Soviets relations between Tehran and Moscow remain tense but then something intensely interesting and unexpected happened in 1979 the Islamic revolution happened in Iran and with it the geopolitical calculus of the entire Middle East changed forever the extremely pro-american Shah was suddenly toppled from power in the extremely conservative anti-American Ayatollah Khamenei seized power in his place the new Iran that emerged under hominy's leadership was declared as the Islamic Republic of Iran a revolutionary Theocratic Islamic State ruled by the ultra-conservative Iranian Shiite Muslim clergy class with Humane himself acting as the clergies in the new regime's supreme leader and the new revolutionary Iran was not Coy about their grander objectives going forward homina was open about his desire to export Iran's Islamic revolution abroad to every other Muslim country and area around the world with the ultimate aim of gradually unifying the Islamic World under the rule of Iran's own clergy and completely destroying the state of Israel from existence but these ambitious and aggressive goals brought the new revolutionary Iran into conflict with pretty much every other state in existence after the rating of the American Embassy in Tehran and the abductions of 52 American diplomats at the end of 1979. the United States severed its relations with Iran and the two countries have remained bitter enemies with no official relations for more than four decades ever since then encouraged by the sudden withdrawal of American and Israeli support for Iran and Iran's own internal revolutionary chaos Saddam Hussein's Arab Nationalist and nominally secular regime in neighboring Iraq balked at the prospect of the Islamic Republic exporting the Islamic revolution into Iraq's Shia Muslim majority and undermining saddam's own authority and so determined to kill the revolution in its cradle and Conquer Iran's era majority province of Kazakhstan which also happened to control around 90 percent of Iran's oil reserves Saddam launched his full-scale invasion of Iran just one year after the toppling of the Shah his invasion would eventually be financed and bankrolled with billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates all Arab monarchies who fear the Iranian clergies call for Revolution and the toppling of monarchies across the Islamic world like their own it would be the beginning of the very long rivalry between the nobility and the monarchists in Saudi Arabia and the clergy in Iran that continues to this very day but Iran's Islamic revolution also sent shock waves throughout the Soviet Union while each now shared a common enemy in the United States each also remained sharply divided along ideological lines with Iran a committed religious theocracy and the Soviet Union a committed atheist State fear of the Islamic revolution spreading from Iran into Afghanistan and then into Soviet Central Asia and stirring up uprisings where the populations were predominantly Muslim was a primary motivator for the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan at the end of 1980. in order to prop up the Afghan Communist Regime there that would ideally From moscow's perspective keep the Islamic revolution from expanding Beyond Iran's borders and into the Muslim citizen sins of Soviet Central Asia Iran sent proxy forces and equipment to support the Shia Muslim mujahideen forces in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviets and Soviet and Iranian forces themselves entered into direct combat against each other on more than one occasion with Soviet Special Forces launching raids into neighboring Iranian territory to destroy mujahideen bases and Soviet fighter jets even shooting down a pair of Iranian helicopters in 1988 but then in 1989 after nearly a decade of failed War the Soviets finally withdrew from Afghanistan and then just two years later the Soviet Union itself collapsed in the aftermath the Russian Federation then emerged was no longer the committed communist and atheist state that it used to be and so relations between it and the theocracy in Iran gradually began to improve from outright hostility to fairly normal by 2000 Iran was the third largest customer in the world of russian-produced weapons and by 2007 the Russians even agreed to begin supplying the Iranians with their 300 missile defense system but the relationship between Moscow and Tehran didn't begin evolving into full-fledged Alliance until Civil War erupted within Syria in 2011. as both regimes suddenly found themselves desperately backing the exact same side there the long-standing Arab nationalist regime of Bashar al-assad and his Syrian baath party for Russia relations with the Assad regime in Syria had been warm ever since the Cold War era staunchly opposed to Israel's existence as a state in the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights which Israel occupied in 1967 after being attacked by Syria and after which Israel then unilaterally declared to Annex in 1981. Syria was also staunchly opposed to Israel's primary International backer the United States and at the same time Syria also bitterly contested the control of the hate Province within turkey insisting that hate had historically belonged to Syria for centuries and had only been separated from them and given to the Turks by the French back in the 1930s as a product of colonialism and so naturally with major territorial disputes with Israel whose greatest Ally was the United States and with turkey who was a member of NATO the Syrian regime aligned itself closer to the Soviet Union during the Cold War instead in exchange for Soviet military and financial aid the syrians then granted the Soviets the ability to establish an overseas Naval facility here at Tardis which became the Soviet Navy's only repair and replenishment facility located anywhere on the Mediterranean Coastline which thus enabled Soviet and later Russian warships and submarines to operate freely in the Mediterranean theater without having to pass through the nato-controlled Turkish Straits back to their home ports and Facilities on the Black Sea after the Soviet Union's collapse Russia inherited the control over the naval facilities of tardis and as the Civil War erupted in Syria in 2011 and the Assad regime looked imminently likely to collapse Moscow feared that whatever regime that would replace him would likely be a pro-western one that would end up terminating their lead to the port Tardis which would eliminate the Russian Navy's ability to effectively operate in the Mediterranean and their ability to challenge NATO there so to stop that from happening Russia deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and mercenaries to Syria beginning in 2015. in order to prop up the pro-mozco regime while the Russian Air Force carried out over 70 000 airstrikes against the Assad regime's various internal enemies the results were a decisive strategic victory for the Kremlin as Assad's territorial control over Syria was firmly expanded at the expense of the rebels and being ever grateful for the help the Assad regime granted the Russians a new sweetheart deal to their Naval facility at Tardis beginning in 2017 Russia was granted full Sovereign territorial control over the base of tardis for a period of 49 years until 2066 completely free of charge and completely free from Syria's legal jurisdiction Tardis essentially became a de facto over an outpost of the Russian Federation itself in Syria on the Mediterranean Coast where they could park up to 11 warships at a time and even store nuclear weapons Russia's Southern flank against nato in the Mediterranean had been secured but it was also helped out tremendously by Iran to the Islamic Republic the Assad regime in Syria remaining in power was of equal strategic importance but for completely different reasons you see Syria along with Iraq and Lebanon all comprise the key parts of what the Iranians like to call their axis of resistance their geopolitical strategy aimed at countering all of their perceived enemies across the Middle East the United States Israel and the gulf era monarchies in exactly that order of severity ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution shifted Iran from an ally of Israel's and Americas to an Unapologetic enemy they have found significant common ground with the Assad regime in Syria because despite their significant ideological differences between Theocratic Islamic nationalism and nominally secular Arab nationalism they share the exact same common enemies Syria has maintained a permanent official state of war with Israel ever since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Syria has never recognized Israeli statehood and Syria has remained the most militantly anti-israel state in the Arab world Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights which They seized from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967 and later unilaterally declared to Annex into Israel in 1981 a move that went unrecognized by any other country in the world until the United States officially did so in 2019 and even better from Iran's perspective the Assad regime in Syria is also largely dominated by the country's minority Shia Muslim adjacent branch of alawite Muslims diminishing the religious differences between the ruling regimes of Iran and Syria and so with Iran and Syria both wishing to see the eventual destruction of Israel and the rolling back of American influence in the Middle East it only made sense for the them each to cooperate wherever they could but standing in between them for decades was Saddam Hussein's but authist and Arab nationalist regime in Iraq who hated both of them for different reasons Saddam hated the Iranians because he feared their exportation of the Islamic revolution into Iraq's majority Shia Muslim population and he hated the Syrian baothist Arab nationalist government because while they shared the same ideology in the same party Saddam felt that he should be the senior leader and that Syria's bahata's party should have subordinated itself beneath his own authority which the Assad regime was unwilling to do for decades saddam's Iraq was often viewed as the Arab world's bulwark against the Persians in Iran and their radical Islamic revolution spreading any further into the Arab world but after Saddam suddenly invaded and conquered Kuwait in 1990 to seize their oil assets and then began preparing for a further Invasion into Saudi Arabia to seize their oil assets the mood of the rest of the Arabs in the United States shifted sharply against him the United states intervened in the Gulf War of 1991 in order to prevent Saddam from dominating the world's supply of oil around the Persian Gulf and then finished the job in 2003 by invading a rock itself and overthrowing him and then later executing him under dubious accusations of his possession of weapons of mass destruction but in doing so the United States generated a power vacuum within a rock between the majority Shia Arabs of the South where most of Iraq's oil is the minority Sunni Arabs of the center where there basically isn't any oil and the minority Sunni Kurds of the north where there's also oil and so after establishing an ill-conceived half-baked democracy that the majority Shia Muslims of the country would inevitably end up winning and controlling the United States basically just spent eight years achieving all of Iran's own interests in Iraq instead of their own Iran wants to permanently keep Iraq as decentralized and as weak of a state as physically possible in order to both keep a staunchly anti-iron figure like Saddam from evera rising there again in to also keep their own supply routes by land open to their primary Ally in Syria for years following the toppling of Saddam the Iranians have worked tirelessly to recruit and trained proxy militia forces out of Iraq's Shia era population these iranian-backed Shiite militia proxies in Iraq will then take weapons and supplies given to them by the Iranian State carrying them across a rock and then through the sparsely populated border region into Iranian allies Syria who will then more than happily allow them to continue on transporting those weapons and supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon a political military organization built out of lebanon's own Shia Muslim population and financed and trained by the Iranian Islamic revolutionary guard Corps with the exact same end goals as the Iranian State the unification of all Islamic peoples beneath one flag the expulsion of Western Powers viewed as imperialists and colonialists from the Middle East and the complete destruction of Israel Over time Hezbollah gradually grew to become arguably even more powerful than the Lebanese State itself the organization currently has more and better armed soldiers than the actual Lebanese Army does and in 2020 a Hezbollah dominated Coalition even managed to take control over the Lebanese government Lebanon therefore represents the first outside country that the Iranians managed to successfully export their Islamic revolution to and Hezbollah itself remains a critical component of Iran's ability to attack Israel and project power into the Eastern Mediterranean where increasingly Rich deposits of natural gas keep getting discovered within the Israeli exclusive economic Maritime Zone that the nearby Hezbollah can attack and harass in order to prevent the Israelis from accessing them but the civil war in Syria threatened to destroy all of Iran's Decades of efforts in Lebanon putting Hezbollah into its position of power against Israel we're the pro-iranian and pro Hezbollah Assad regime to fall from power and a pro-western regime take its place Iran's ability to funnel weapons and Supplies by land to Hezbollah Lebanon on would be destroyed and so Iran's ability to attack Israel and project power into the Mediterranean would be significantly crippled and so to prevent that from happening the Iranians found themselves fighting side by side with the Russians in Syria who were trying to defend their port in Naval strategy against NATO it was largely the culmination of Iranian forces and their proxies fighting in the Assad regime's behalf on the ground and the Russian Air Force fighting for the Assad regime in the skies that won assad-backed control over most of the country by 2019 and then following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 the Kremlin began having to rely on Iran and the country even further the Russians pulled out most of their troops mercenaries and equipment from Syria in order to redeploy them into the more pressing theater in Ukraine and so the Iranian forces and their proxies have been largely left behind in their place to protect and even further expand the Russians gains in the country for the Assad regime and the all-important Naval facility at Tardis then of course as Western Financial sanctions begin to rain down on Russia across 2022 and into 2023 just like they did on a run after the Islamic revolution in 1979. the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic emerged as the two most heavily sanctioned countries on the planet and the world's two largest Pariah States sensing the two Nations growing military cooperation in Syria their shared status as parias cut off from the Western Financial world and their shared hostility towards the United States it was no surprise then that Vladimir Putin decided to make his first official state visit outside of the former Soviet space following the invasion of Ukraine to Iran in July of 2022 where he met with Iran's current supreme leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei trade between the two countries accelerated further as Russia's access to the European market was decimated and as the Russians began being forced to Pivot their vast exports of oil and gas away from Europe and towards Asian economies like China and India India has emerged a particular help to the Russians since the invasion of Ukraine began because India wishes to pursue a policy of global non-alignment similar to how it operated between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War era the Indian government has declined to apply any sanctions on the Russian regime following the invasion of Ukraine and considers the war to be entirely a European Affair that is not of their concern quite to the contrary of the West India has dramatically increased their purchases of discounted Russian oil gas and fertilizer since the invasion began which has helped India acquire the resources and needs for cheap and help Supply the Russians with cash to continue on fighting by the end of 2022 the volume of trade between India and Russia had more than doubled from the year previously and by the end of this year in 2023 it is projected to increase even further this is all suddenly boosted Russia to becoming the number one largest supplier of oil and fertilizer to India while even before the war the Russians were also by far the largest supplier of weapons and equipment to the Indian Armed Forces as long ago 2017 68 percent of the Indian military's Hardware Imports were coming from Russia alone while Indio represents the Russian defense industry's second largest customer worldwide after the Iranians and third Russia and India therefore have a very close economic relationship but getting Russia's exports to India is shall we say complicated the traditional route for Russia to export oil gas fertilizer and arms to the Indian market takes them from Saint Petersburg and then by ship through the Baltic Sea and the Danish Straits controlled by NATO through the English Channel controlled by NATO through the Strait of Gibraltar controlled on the Northern Side by NATO across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal then across the Red Sea and through the dangerous babelman Deb Strait with major American and French military bases in Djibouti and then finally across the Arabian Sea to India this route is long expensive and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine geopolitically tenuous as it passes through no less than five major narrow Maritime choke points four of which are heavily under the influence of NATO member states and their militaries and this is where Iran once again comes into play to assist the Russians long aware of their important but vulnerable Maritime trade route to India the Russians and Indians have jointly for decades now been working together on a project known as the international north-south transport Corridor a vast interconnected system of Railways highways and ships that can transport Russian exports in the north more directly to India down in the South Indian Studies have suggested that once fully operational the ins TC will reduce the price of Russian exports to India by about 30 percent and reduce the travel time of exports by about 40 percent while it will also further enable Russian exports to make their way to India without having to pass through any geopolitically sensitive choke points meaning India can keep getting cheap resources necessary to power and Advance their economy and Russia can keep getting cash to circumvent Western Financial sanctions without the serious risk of disruption Iran is therefore the key intermediary between the Indian and Russian markets as part of the plan will entail loading Russian exports up on his ships that will flow down the Caspian Sea enter into Iran and then travel by train and Highway across the country towards Iran's Southern ports on the Gulf of Oman and then continue on from there across the Arabian Sea towards India by Shep if the plan is successful Putin's Russia may just end up achieving an elusive goal that neither the Soviets nor the czars before him ever could establish Russian Maritime access on the Indian Ocean Iran thus represents a geographically vital area for the Russians to export their goods across and into India and this is yet a further reason for the Russians to collaborate with the Iranians and expand their growing partnership in the months that followed Putin's meeting with the Ayatollah in June of 2022 Iran was happy to then begin providing the Russians with their drones missiles body armor and more for four primary reasons first since the Americans are supplying the Ukrainian side with American-made weapons Iran supplying the Russian side with iranian-made weapons Grand them a unique opportunity to see how their own year Stacks up against the Americans gear and what lessons they can learn from that in preparation of her potential war with the United States themselves in the future second the Russians have in turn agreed to sell the Iranian some of their more advanced fighter jets like the su-35 and potentially even their Advanced Air Defense systems like the s-400 which the Iranians probably want to use to defend their nuclear weapons research facilities from any potential Israeli airstrikes since Israel has insisted for years now that they would preemptively bomb Iran's nuclear weapons facilities if they ever believe the Iranians were close to actually developing one and that leads us to the third reason why Iran is providing the Russians with military equipment to fight in Ukraine they may be hoping that the Russians go a step further and actually assist them with developing a nuclear weapon at first thought that idea sounds completely insane if the Russians help provide Iran with a nuclear weapon it would immediately and unequivocally torpedo Russia's relationship with all of Iran's Rivals that aren't necessarily Russia's Rivals like Israel Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all three of these countries remain important Financial Partners of the kremlins because they buy a lot of Russia's weapons as well and they have all so far stayed generally neutral in the Ukraine conflict so alienating them by providing a nuclear bomb to Iran would probably be a bad move Israel has repeatedly stated that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon would be considered as a casus ballet for a preemptive first strike on Iranian nuclear weapon sites that could lead to a full-fledged War exploding between Israel and Iran while Saudi Arabia would likely immediately seek to acquire their own nuclear weapons as well in order to counter the nuclear status of their greatest rival but if the relationship between Moscow and the West continues to get even worse if the ukrainians begin making even more military gains on the battlefield supplied with American Arms and began threatening Russia's hold over Crimea and Sebastopol the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet then Russia may be further incentivized to take riskier asymmetric actions to distract America and the West with conflicts Beyond Ukraine helping the Iranians suddenly acquire a nuclear weapon is precisely a way for the Russians to do this as it would immediately trigger a conflict in the Middle East between Iran and Israel that could quickly spiral into another major war that the Americans would be forced to divert at least some and probably most of their military attention towards because unlike in Ukraine a war between nuclear-armed Israel and nuclear-armed Iran or a conflict between nuclear seeking Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Iran across the vast oil fields of the Persian Gulf where half of the world's oil is located are each conflicts that the American Military itself would be highly likely to get directly involved in meaning that America's current focus on Ukraine would be massively distracted but Iran wants a nuclear weapon as well because they view acquiring them as a sort of nuclear shield from a western military intervention ever since 2003 the Iranians have sat by and watched on as other non-nuclear-armed Pariah regimes who ran afoul of the United States like saddam's Iraq and Gaddafi's Libya were easily toppled from Power after vastly conventionally Superior American and European Armed Forces intervened against them at the same time they have witnessed how American and Western Nations have skirted around direct military interventions against Pariah States who are armed with nuclear weapons like North Korea after 2006 and Russia after their invasion of Ukraine nuclear weapons are the most guaranteed and tested insurance policy available to ensure that your country will not be invaded by a hostile foreign power and even further Iran's ability to influence events in the Middle East and pursue their ultimate foreign policy objectives have been growing worse ever since 2020 largely because of the United States this is the fourth and final reason why the Iranians are so eager to begin supporting the Russians against Ukraine and NATO after Jordan normalized relations with Israel in 1994 there wasn't a single other country in the Arab world that would lastingly recognize Israel again until a torrent of them all began doing so suddenly in 2020. after negotiations with the United States Washington was able to convince the Sunni monarchies of both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize relations with Israel in 2020 and then in exchange for America's recognition of Morocco's territorial claim to Western Sahara Washington convinced the monarchy in Morocco to normalize relations with Israel as well and then in exchange for removing Sudan from the state sponsors of terrorism list and providing a loan of 1.2 billion dollars Sudan was turned by Washington as well and normalized relations with Israel that was four countries in the Islamic World normalizing relations with Israel in under a year meaning four less nations in the Muslim World willing to be hostile towards Israel and four less Nations willing to support Iran's war against Israel there were even Rumblings in 2021 and 2022 of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel as well since each shared a mutual enemy in Iran and so recognizing that they were suddenly and rapidly losing ground in the Middle East to American and Israeli diplomacy Iran decided to approach both Saudi Arabia and China and agree to an unprecedented deal in March of 2023. under Chinese mediation revolutionary Iran would finally restore diplomatic relations with its monarchist rival Saudi Arabia after they had been severed seven years previously back in 2016 to Iran the deal is not a peace agreement the regime remains militantly opposed to Saudi Arabia's monarchy in its close relationship with the United States but the deal enables Iran to accomplish three things temporarily set aside their Regional Cold War and rivalry against their perceived lesser enemy the Saudis and focused resources on countering their perceived greater enemies instead the United States in Israel secondly it undermines what was the increasing legitimacy of American diplomacy in the Middle East by making China appear as the great mediator and Peacemaker and thirdly it likely stalls Saudi Arabia as and other Arab Nations willingness to normalize relations with Israel as they no longer perceive Iran to be the major looming existential threat meaning they also no longer view Israel as the enemy of their enemy despite vast differences in ideology and geopolitical goals between the regimes of Iran Russia and the People's Republic of China they do all seemingly share one common belief that the days of a unipolar world order dominated by the United States that began after the end of the Cold War in 1992 is beginning to come to an end for its entire existence ever since the Islamic revolution of 1979 the Iranian clergy has been determined to undermine the american-led world order wherever and whenever it possibly can because the United States is perceived in Tehran as the Ultimate Force standing in the way of their ultimate foreign policy objectives which are the unification of all Muslims worldwide beneath a single Authority led by the clergy and the destruction of Israel Russia similarly views its war in Ukraine as a fight against nato in the United States as Moscow seeks to expand Russia's borders and control across the Eurasian step and across the former Soviet Bloc that NATO has been gradually expanding into while China similarly views the United States as the greatest Force standing in the way of their ultimate foreign policy objective of finishing the Chinese Civil War once and for all by establishing the Communist party's authority over Taiwan and in so doing finally reversing China's Century of humiliation delivered by the Western Powers Iran will support anybody's fight anywhere in the world that they perceive to be undermining the United States AS Global Authority and legitimacy and for now that biggest fight is taking place on the battlefields in Ukraine so ultimately despite Iran and Russia's long history of warfare betrayals and conflicting interests through basically all of their history up until 1992 and so long as they each continue to view the United States as their shared greater enemy standing in the way of their very different goals around the world the Russians and Iranians are likely to continue pushing ever closer into a relationship that more and more resembles a full-blown military alliance with every passing day it's already been playing out in Syria for years one of the largest most geopolitically complex and most horrific conflicts of the entire 21st century that is at the epicenter of the russian-ironian relationship and the clash between themselves and the United States but unfortunately if I made a very in-depth video covering this darker side of the Iran and Russia partnership explaining the multi-sided civil war in Syria the disturbing violent and controversial details of covering one of the biggest civil wars in human history that is still ongoing would cause the video to become instantly demonetized and age-restricted which I honestly agree should happen but it also ultimately means that YouTube's algorithm wouldn't promote the video to you and there's simply no way that you would ever see it here that's why instead I created yet another full-length companion video to this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the same length as this video you just watched that covers the entire course and explanation into the civil war in Syria and uploaded it directly to nebula which as you've probably heard by now is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content like my entire modern conflict series with 23 other full-length episodes containing about 10 hours worth of additional combined content that you can go go and watch right now covering why recent major Wars and conflicts have happened that'll help you stay up to date on what's going on across our world and why from all of these videos covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine to these ones covering the recent civil wars in Libya Yemen and Ethiopia to these ones covering the conflicts in China's xinjiang Province and North Korea and many others with brand new episodes releasing every single month of course the reason why all of these videos are only available on nebula is because they just wouldn't ever work here on YouTube it would never be able to be viewed here because of the way this site Works in relation to highly controversial and sensitive recent events on the other hand though nebula is a totally different platform without an algorithm and without any ads it's just a platform about great and unique content made by nearly 200 other independent thoughtful creators with plenty of other unique exclusive bonus projects from other creators you probably already know like Neo's under exposure series with episodes covering events like the bin Laden raid or the Kuwaiti oil fire set by Saddam 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thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 5,194,182

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: LXIu9YEr7UM

Length: 39min 41sec (2381 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023