Russia ‘clearest winner’ in US-Israeli war on Iran – John Mearsheimer

New Delhi stands to lose out significantly from the conflict in the Middle East, the influential thinker has told RT’s New Order show

Russia is the “clearest winner” in the US-Israeli war on Iran, international relations expert John Mearsheimer has said on RT’s New Order show.

Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, added that India stands to be “a big loser” from the Middle East conflict despite having good relations with all sides. 

“The clearest winner is Russia,” Mearsheimer said, referring to the waiver of sanctions on Russian oil and gas by US President Donald Trump.

On New Delhi’s diplomatic trajectory as the conflict escalates, Mearsheimer said, “The only interesting question at this point in time is how big a loser it’s [India] going to be.”

“This is all bad news for India. There’s no question that all Indians understand that this war is disastrous for India,” Mearsheimer added. New Delhi’s pain points include inflation, cost of gas, fertilizers, and food production, according to the expert.

Mearsheimer said Trump and Israel believed in a quick and decisive victory, and that the Gulf nations and countries such as India also did not see a long war. “So what happened was that India did not protest. The Gulf states did not protest,” he added.

New Delhi did not condemn the US-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, choosing instead to later offer condolences.

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On the complexities of dealing with the Trump administration, Mearsheimer said India has done a decent job. “[Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is aware of the danger of getting too close to the United States,” he stated. “The United States is basically a rogue elephant, and if you get too close to a rogue elephant, it may trample you.”

He said the countries that have benefited the most from the Iran war are “clearly Russia and China, and they’re both members of BRICS. But at the same time, I think a lot of the BRICS countries are going to be badly hurt. India is one of them. Indonesia may be another.”

Mearsheimer said the end result is that the war will cause those countries to rethink their relationship with the US.