THE DEEPER DIVE: The Iran-Israel Conflict will not be World War III
It will be popular for some on the far right to predict Israel's attack on Iran is the start of WWIII, but mark my words: Bad as the war may be, it's not World War III.
Thirty years ago, if Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear production facilities and destroyed so much of its military and killed so many top generals, I would have said it was the beginning of World War III because so many Arab/Islamic nations would join in defending Iran just for the sake of sacking Israel. Even three years ago I might have said it would be the start of WWIII. Today, however, that is less likely than at any time in Israel’s history.
This article is not about who should win but about how it is not likely to play out.
In these present times, the tectonic plates have radically shifted, and Iran’s boldest allies have already been decimated. Gaza and the Palestinians have been reduced to rubble and have more fight on their hands than they even begin to know how to handle. Not far behind them is Lebanon where Hezbullah’s forces likely cannot do much more than they already are. Syria’s forces are completely exhausted from years of war with practically everyone.
And Russia has been through the Ukraine drain where almost a million Russian forces have been killed or sent home wounded since Putin launched his invasion. It’s nt itching for another fight. Putin’s progress has been one of incrementally creeping forward, being pressed back, returning forward again. It’s been progress by inches at great, grinding cost, and Ukraine has also taken the fight back deep inside Russian territory. Putin has his hands full and needs victory badly to justify his war to his own people, many of whom are not thrilled with his lack of clear success or even with the whole idea of that enterprise against their slavic cousins.
The only way Russia can seriously change the war in Ukraine is by going nuclear, and I’ve always believed Putin would be extremely unlikely to go nuclear because all of Russia knows that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) remains the absolute nuclear policy of all NATO. While Ukraine is not NATO, Russia going nuclear inside of what the US and Europe consider to be Europe’s eastern fringe—rightly or wrongly so—would be an enormous nuclear gamble for Russia to take. If Putin actually went that far to get Ukraine, he has to fear he may lose Moscow or some other Russian city that he loves.
It would be Putin who would have to decide he wants to truly launch WWIII because the US and Europe will not be first to go nuclear, and I don’t think Putin is anywhere near that dumb. Nuclear war brought back to Russia’s homeland is the sharply red-lined risk he would be taking, and that is why, for all his nuclear saber rattling, his Ukraine invasion has not taken that turn, as I’ve said all along it never would because Putin is no fool. So, his hands are full if he’s going to win Ukraine with conventional warfare. He certainly doesn’t need another war that doesn’t serve his interests much anymore now that Iran’s military has already been decimated with plenty more on the way, as Israel says this will not end for several weeks.
In fact, while Putin has one commander stating that WWIII has begun and demanding a mass mobilization to get ready for all-out global war, he has another commander telling him it’s time to cut his losses and end Russia’s war in Ukraine, or the two nations will each grind the other endlessly into dust because the West is certain to keep supplying weapons. Even if the US backed away completely, Europe has shown very clearly it definitely will not back away from supplying Ukraine. It is easier to fight its concerns about Russian aggression along its eastern flank (whether its concerns are right as it believes they are or not) via Ukraine than to take the job fully upon itself.
A Russian commander has called on Putin to stop the war in Ukraine, in the latest sign of growing dissent in the Kremlin's army. Putin's troops have suffered horrendous casualties in just over three years of fighting, while struggling to make major territorial gains.
Ukraine's army estimates that the Russians have suffered more than 988,000 casualties - including injured and killed - during the bloody war. Despite sustaining some of its heaviest losses in the campaign last year when at least 45,287 soldiers were killed, Putin's army succeeded in taking just 0.6% of additional ground. Now a Russian commander has spoken out about the endless slaughter, urging the Russian leader to strike a peace deal with Ukraine….
Asked by Kalashnikov what he was prepared to do to achieve victory over Ukraine, the officer bluntly replied: "I would stop the war altogether. Unfortunately this war won't end until we completely stupidly kill each other.
"They are like us. They won't give up and we won't give up. This will continue until we kill or maim each other and then the third enemy will come and kill both of us.
That’s what Putin is hearing in one ear.
Kalashinkov's real name is Vladimir Kucherenko - a Russian nationalist agitator who has often praised the Soviet Union.
On his Youtube channel, he often discusses the so-called threat posed by Nato to Russia and the likelihood that this antagonism will result in a nuclear war.
Kalashnikov said he agreed with the overall conclusions of the senior officer, and blamed Putin's failure to plan a proper "blitzkrieg" in 2022 as the reason for the current slaughter.
"We needed a blitzkrieg in 2022, but it wasn't prepared. As a result, it turned out like C21st Verdun. With a huge number of losses.
"There are now so many bodies lying around in the Kursk region alone. In this case the liberation campaign makes no sense. Those we want to liberate will hate us.
"Well it is impossible to continue this mass slaughter when nothing can be changed strategically, by and large."
In an ominous warning to Putin, he added: "A break is needed to fix something overall. We need to stop in Ukraine, or we will be left without an army."
That is from a commentator with a large audience who was very pro-war since the start of Putin’s invasion, but he now concedes that, like his guest, an anonymous commander in Putin’s forces inside of Ukraine, he thinks it is time to end it. Putin’s War is going nowhere.
In the other ear, Putin is hearing the same kind of warmongering that people like Lindsey Graham endlessly give in the US:
A Vladimir Putin general claimed today that World War 3 has already started following Israel’s strikes on Iranian soil on Thursday night. Maj-Gen Apti Alaudinov, 51, urged the Kremlin to carry out mass mobilisation of up to one million fresh troops.
Russia hasn’t got a million ready fighters to amass. It’s already devouring the children of other nations like North Korea to fight its war and making little headway. Every time Russia has believed it is going to storm forward with a bold new initiative, it has turned out Ukraine has a surprise up its sleeve, too. So, Russia is deep in the quagmire I said all along this would be for them because, as the one Russian commentator said, Ukraine truly will fight to the last man, woman and child standing because they lived for decades under Soviet domination and will never do so again.
The deputy chief of the Russian armed forces' main military-political directorate wrote: "We need to declare mobilisation." Alaudinov, who is a prominent propagandist and the commander of the Chechnya-based Akhmat special forces, added: "We need to prepare at least half a million people in advance. But realistically one million people. We need to call them up and start preparing them for the fact that the war has already begun, which we already know is happening - World War 3. But it has already taken on a new turn and a new momentum.
Putin hasn’t been able to win the war he desperately wants to win in order to restore Russia to some of its former Soviet greatness. He made it bluntly and abundantly clear in his original invasion speech that this war was predominantly about righting the wrongs of history that had been what he called “the Great Catastrophe” when the Soviet Union collapsed, the empire Putin served as chief of disinformation in Eastern Europe under the KGB.
(You can see my take on all of that in “American Wars, Warmongers and War Criminals v. St. Putin and the Russian Desire for Global Harmony” and in my prior articles referenced in that article, quoting Putin’s speech at length. I will note matter-of-factly, that unpopular as my views were with some way back then, there is not a single thing that went differently in the years between now and then than the way I said things would go for Putin. NOT ONE! Don’t believe me? Go back and read what I actually wrote at the outset of the war and come back and show me what turned out differently. I cannot be rightly faulted for an unpopular view if everything went exactly as I said it would. Come back and show me where it didn’t; otherwise, you’re just vocalizing how you FEEL about what I said, and that doesn’t matter in the slightest.)
So, I would agree with those who say it appears Putin has no stomach for another new war front in order to support his old ally, Iran. He needs to apply all the power he can muster to winning the war he is already in if he’s going to manage to pull off a partial victory. Many thought he would win a solid victory in a year or less. I was one of the few on the conservative right who did not believe that at all and also did not believe in the early days of the war he would be foolish enough to go nuclear. He’s a consummate pragmatist, and his ambitions are for restoring Russia’s old glory, not for splitting his forces to help Iran with its present battle.
So, I agree with those who are now saying there are cracks in the axis, and it looks like Russia is about to abandon Iran—to leave it isolated to fight its own war. (Which is what I believe most Arab nations will do, too.)
Israel’s devastating air and land assault on Iran has left Tehran—its capital city and heart of the regime—without functioning air defence systems and effectively undefended. Operation Rising Lion, launched on Friday in a race against time to prevent the Islamic Republic from building nuclear weapons, marks more than an escalation in the shadow war between both countries, however. It signals the collapse of Iran’s fragile strategic partnership with Russia.
You can read the numerous stories about the Israel-Iran war that follow in the headlines below to find out how Israel so effectively decapitated Iran from the start of this conflict. That doesn’t mean Iran will not have some horrors still to rain down on Israel, but its ability to fight back was seriously crushed from the start by some ingenious inside planning that Israel set up, which largely terminated Iran’s air force and stunted its missile-launching abilities and decapitated its military command.
So, the Iranian military is running around with most of its hydra heads cut off. It’s still lethal, and will find ways to bite, but it’s in desperately bad condition, and the most desperate individual of all appears to be the Ayatollah who might lose his head to his own people, so angry are they over his disgraceful failure to defend Iran.
And Russia doesn’t want to be on the side of such a big loser when it’s waste-deep in its own troubles:
Tehran’s strategic reliance on Russia—for both military kit and international cover—is now in freefall.
Despite Iran’s years of military and diplomatic support, Russia, overstretched by its commitments in Ukraine, has been unable to replace Iran’s S-300 air defence batteries since the last remaining three were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in October.
A plan to attempt to repair the platforms came and went without result.
Publicly, the Islamic regime issued statements that it no longer needed Russian assets because it was capable of providing its own.
But privately, according to sources in Tehran, the fact that it took Russia's MFA 12 hours to issue a statement condemning the Israeli attack has not gone unnoticed.
The Iranian regime had leaned on the Russia relationship to dispel domestic perceptions of isolation.
Unlike China, which trades with Iran on a purely transactional basis, the Tehran–Moscow axis had projected a sense of mutual strategic interest.
That illusion may now be gone.
"Iran bailed Russia out in 2022 and 2023 when it came to drone warfare," said Dr Efrat Sopher of the Ezri Center in Haifa.
But Moscow’s domestic production of Shahed drones under licence has significantly reduced its dependency on Iranian supply.
"Now Russia doesn’t need them anymore," she added.
It may come down to having been a marriage of convenience that is suddenly far more inconvenient than it is beneficial to Russia.
Professor Mark Galeotti, a leading expert on Russian security affairs, agreed:
"From the Russians' point of view, Iran is now less useful. Tehran is peeved, but it doesn’t have leverage anymore."
Mutual need has never replaced an inherent mutual distrust which lingered, anchored in history, between Tehran and Moscow.
While Russia's intervention in Syria ostensibly meant supporting Bashar Assad's ally, Iran, the suspicion in Tehran was always that Russia's presence was designed to ensure Iranian influence could be contained.
Iranian officials, insiders say, were alarmed when Putin offered to intercede with Trump on their behalf.
"They feared he’d sell them down the river to get concessions over Ukraine," said Galeotti.
"These have always been alliances of convenience. And this convenience is fading."
Exactly how I look at it.
Marriages of convenience are not strongly wedded alliances when the things that made them conveniently helpful break down as badly as things have broken down for both Iran and Russia where neither the Ayatollah or Putin are seen as being the victors both thought they would be by now. The Ayatollah thought he would go into a conflict like this against Israel like a saber-tooth tiger. Instead, he’s gone in with a limp and hip dysplasia because his forces were devastated by some tricky blows on day one.
Russia might have found itself duty-bound to try to ntervene on Iran’s behalf with Israel, had Tehran acted on its 2007 invitation to join the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Russia-led military bloc with a mutual defence clause.
But the Ayatollahs rejected inclusion to a group dominated by a historical rival. Given Russia’s current inability to offer meaningful intervention today, it is just as well.
While Iran enters the fray badly injured, all of its allies also start out badly injured, as I laid out above and as this article now lays out, too:
At the end of 2023, the Islamic Republic sat at the top of the “axis of resistance”, which included its proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But Israeli retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attacks has led to the elimination of Hezbollah and the severe downgrading of Hamas as effective fighting forces.
The loss of Syria – a vital supply route for Hezbollah – was the final death knell in Iran’s regional ambitions: the creation of a so-called Shi’a crescent and ring of steel around Israel.
So, the whole battle theater is vastly different than it was a couple of decades ago or even than it was just a year ago. And I don’t think Russia has any desire to wade into the middle of that quagmire with a war on its hands that means far more to Putin’s heart that Putin desperately needs to win, given how much it has cost Russians.
“The regime occupies a unique position as the weakest of the anti-American states and the only non-nuclear one,” added Taleblu.
“And this tells you why they have kept the nuclear drive so long. It’s the only thing they can rely on. It’s the only thing that will buy them an invitation to the big table and secure the regime the two things it craves most: status and security.”
Well, that’s solidly off the table for Iran now, and everyone knows it. The entire nuclear operation is not going to go away easily, of course. Fully disabling those nuclear facilities in a stable manner that doesn’t risk nuclear catastrophe will be a tough challenge, but it should be clear to anyone that Israel hasn’t gone this far to ever let those facilities go back under Iranian control or become operable again.
Moreover,
In 2023 Russia was forced by its need for Iran to support Hamas.
And it paid a heavy price: its previously close relationship with Israel was terminated, and Jerusalem is now donating Patriot missile systems to Ukraine.
So, in Putin’s calculous there is likely no upside in fighting to save Iran’s nuclear facilities from complete take-down by Israel, whatever that means in terms of how those facilities are taken offline because you cannot just go blowing them up without creating a nuclear nightmare for everyone far and wide, including for Israel, should a Scirocco (khamsin or Sharav) wind blow in from the east. (Such were named the east winds that were seen as blowing in divine justice in the apocalyptic times of the ancient prophets—dry desert winds of death and destruction, which with the nuclear element would be off the scale for Israel.)
“The days when a strong Iran could push Russia into supporting Hamas are gone now,” said Prof Galeotti.
“Russia has cranked up their economy into a proper war-fighting state. It can afford to walk away.”
In the meantime, Vladimir Putin is desperate to leverage Trump away from Ukraine.
It is telling, says Galeotti, that much of the time in their last meeting was dedicated to the issue of Iran.
"Russia might now choose to distance itself from Tehran in order to reclaim its regional influence," he said.
“Putin is good at driving the conversation off topic when it suits him.
“He knows he has to offer Trump something—if that can’t be in Ukraine, a classic solution is to expand to something laterally.
“He still holds key intel on Iran’s nuclear programme. He knows where the entrances are to the bunkers, and even the radar frequencies for the remaining few air defence systems which Israel hasn’t destroyed.
“He could use that to gain concessions over Ukraine or even as a way back into Israel’s good graces.”
What remains unknown is whether Tehran will publicly acknowledge this shift—or continue to act as if Moscow remains its partner.
If Israel ever had a time when it could try with some prospect of success to seize the day and rid itself forever of Iran’s nuclear threats, that time is now. That doesn’t mean all goes well. It may all go to hell, but it doesn’t mean it is going to be World War III either, not like it likely would have been years ago. I don’t think Iran is going to find itself with many battle-ready allies right now when it appears to have lost the upper hand and when all its usual allies already have their hands full.
At the same time, many Arab nations enjoy good trade with Israel and have no reason to want to lose that in order to save Iran’s butt because many of them are not fond of the former Persian empire that once ruled over them either. China’s interests are absorbed in the South China Sea and Taiwan, Russia in Ukraine, North Korea in Ukraine. There is just not a lot of reason for any of these to want to go deep in helping Iran fight Israel.
At the same time, President Trump has made it clear that if Iran turns any of its weapons on US forces, which he claims are remaining outside the conflict, other than aiding Israel defensively against inbound missiles, drones, etc., that it will be all-out war between Iran and the US. Iran might try that gambit but I doubt any of its friends want to get caught in that fray on Iran’s behalf because their bonds don’t run that deep.
Still war is chaos, and there will be more chaos to come from all of this
Having said all that, I’m sure I’ll lose some more supporters who just don’t want to hear the truth. Some of them may hate Israel, but my words have nothing to do with whether Israel should win or lose. They will simple be the truth of how this goes. I will have those who tell me I’m dead wrong. I did at the start of the Ukraine conflict, too, who told me I was an idiot that Putin would walk all over Ukraine and own it all in a year or that he would start a nuclear war; yet, not a thing about that conflict went differently than I said it would right from the beginning. That’s just a fact. None of those who left my writing because they hated that truth about how it would go have come back; but that’s the way it goes. People can hate what you say because of how strongly they FEEL about it, but I don’t say it be popular. I only say it to be accurate. Iran holds the losing hand here.
But, having said all of THAT, I will also say that Iran can still cause lots of trouble here, and this war will make things worse for the US. Moreover, if Israel doesn’t start winding stuff down in Gaza, and wrap up as quickly as it can in Iran, it can overplay its hand and start turning nations against it. It is not as though Israel is any more loved in this world than Iran.
This new war has already jacked up the price of oil, which was just about the ONLY thing holding down inflation in the US. With crude having shot up about 10% since Friday, that hedge oil provided against inflation could be on hold for awhile, and so overall inflation wills start to rise because most things were already rising, especially if Iran plugs up the Straight of Hormuz where we could see $100 oil. As I say, I’m not saying Iran cannot cause plenty of damage, but this won’t become World War III unless Israel seriously overplays its hand or makes some very stupid moves that accidentally turn this into a religious conflict.
That inflation in the price of oil will be on top of what is already coming from tariffs; but, of course, it will give Trump the opportunity when the tariff inflation starts to arrive on time in early summer, as I originally said it would, to blame all the inflation on the rising cost of oil. That will be an argument of convenience when it comes, but I’m sure it will come.
The Israel-Iran war is also causing breaks in MAGA world. It’s a split right down the center of Republicans between those who wanted a president that kept us solidly out of all wars, and the old Neocons and RINOs. Now Trump is suddenly expending our hardware defending Israel and threatening Iran with a war to end all Iranian wars if it attacks US ships, bases, troops, etc. Some of Trump’s big allies like Tucker Carlson are now lambasting him as if he is a traitor to the MAGA cause.
So, there will be plenty of chaos from all of this, and any war has some remote possibility of evolving into WWIII due to missteps along the way. I’m just saying that WWIII is nowhere near as likely from the present conflict as it used to be and not much more likely than from any other conflict at this point.
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I tend to agree with most of your analysis, unfortunately, we have the" Great Flip-Flopping Orange Man" and you never know what log he'll throw in the fire. He's already sending a carrier group there. That should scare anyone!!!