Donald Trump can take action against Iran and know whether it will benefit Russia

Washington: The next York congressman had already praised Donald Trump’s resumption of a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran before he appointed Elise Stefanik as the next U.S. ambassador to the UN.

In order to “choke off” Iran’s oil revenue, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected last month reached $144 billion between 2021 and 2023 and $34 billion in 2024, the Wall Street Journal said that Trump will “dramatically increase” sanctions.

However, can Trump’s support for Israel and plan to restrict the Islamic Republic’s daily oil shipments of 1.7 million barrels affect Russia’s sales of its main source of income? The course of hostilities in the Middle East is one of the factors that will be involved.

According to Matt Gertken, chief strategist for geopolitical and U.S. political strategy at BCA Research, “Iran will retaliate when Trump enforces the sanctions to show that if it is not allowed to generate oil revenue and conduct commerce, then other countries in the region may not be able to either,” he told a media report.

“I think we’ll see some surprise events, maybe some sabotage or some attacks that threaten—but not devastate—global oil supply from the region.”

Marco Rubio, a hardline senator from Florida who is slated to become Trump’s secretary of state, asserts that Israel has the “right to respond disproportionately to stop” the danger presented by Tehran and its proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel may feel that the current situation “is too good to pass up,” Gertken said, given the attacks on Iran’s missile defense, Hezbollah’s reversal, and internal instability in the Islamic Republic brought on by shortages and inflation.

Israel “may even go so far as to stage strikes or prepare to stage strikes or sabotage the nuclear program,” he claimed, threatening to target Iran’s domestic fuel supplies.

The Biden administration attempted to resurrect the Iran nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018.

One of the first international leaders to congratulate Trump after his victory last week was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Trump has a tight connection. If the United States and Israel collaborated on airstrikes against Tehran’s nuclear program, Gertken said, “then Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz, and we’ll lose maybe 18 million barrels of oil per day.”

“If the global market suffers an even more significant shortage or bottleneck, then the fact that the Russian supply can still access that market means that it’s quite good for Russia because they gain pricing power,” he said.

“The Russians would be able to increase production, they’d see less sanctions enforcement, and they would see higher prices globally if a major shock occurred in which Iran’s nuclear program were attacked.”

With a shadow fleet of ships that conceal ties to Moscow, Russia has mostly gotten over the G-7-led restrictions on its main export, which set a $60 per barrel price ceiling on seaborne oil. Russia has increased the amount of oil it can carry via its shadow fleet by about 70% in the last year, according to a report released last month by the KSE Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Kyiv School of Economics.

Trump’s administration will target international ports and dealers who handle Iranian oil, according to people close to his advisers, the Wall Street Journal said.

Berlin-based energy and geopolitical researcher Tom O’Donnell estimated that a sudden shutdown of Iran’s exports would have only a minor effect on Russia’s commodities exports.

“There would be a spike because of the surprise in prices, but if it was expected, I’m sure the Saudis and other OPEC and OPEC Plus members would be happy to take Iran’s share,” he said to a media report.

“Russia may seize some of that. “As long as Russia is a member of OPEC Plus, it’s unclear who would get those 1.7 million barrels,” O’Donnell said, adding that all of the OPEC Plus nations have export restrictions.

“I would imagine that, like Biden, Trump will not want to do anything to Iran or have the Israelis do something to it that might make the Iranians fear for their existence,” he said.

“The Iranians can very easily launch missiles and drones and take out a considerable amount of production around the Gulf, causing a huge international oil crisis.”