RUSSIA PERSPECTIVE

Moscow, May 28, 2026. For Russian media and state-owned outlets, the night of May 27-28 confirms a long-held thesis: Washington is not seeking a peace agreement, but a capitulation. When US forces strike a drone control station in Bandar Abbas and shoot down four Iranian drones above the Strait of Hormuz, Russian commentators do not read 'defensive strikes' - they see the continuation of a war by other means, under the guise of a ceasefire that Washington disregards at its whim.

The Russian framing rests on a key testimony. Ali Bagheri, Iran's deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, speaks from Moscow - where he attended a security conference and met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko. 'The United States does not believe in peace through diplomacy. They believe in peace through force, aggression, and barbarity,' he declares to RT. The choice of Moscow as a platform is not coincidental: it signals the density of the Russian-Iranian partnership at the very moment when the escalation is relaunched.

Kommersant accurately recounts the incident's mechanics: a US tanker attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz by disabling its radar, prompting an Iranian response, which in turn was followed by US strikes presented as 'measured and defensive.' The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) counterattacks by targeting a US base - described as an 'advisement' - and warns that any recurrence would trigger a 'more decisive' response. Missiles and drones are then intercepted above Kuwait, suggesting that the Ali Al Salem base, near the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, was the target.

What Moscow retains most is Trump's threat against Oman. The US president declared before his cabinet that if Muscat joined the Iran-Oman joint toll project at Ormuz, the United States 'would have to blow them up.' For Russian analysts, this threat against a US ally illustrates the irrationality of a doctrine that claims to manage 'international waters' located over 11,000 kilometers from US coastlines. A professor from Tehran University interviewed by RT points out the legal contradiction: the strait is shared between Iranian and Omani territorial waters; under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, neither the United States nor any extraregional power has authority to regulate its passage.

The ongoing negotiations - a 60-day memorandum under discussion in Oman - are precisely about Ormuz. Iran conditions its reopening on war reparations, the withdrawal of US troops from the region, and the end of Israeli wars in Lebanon and Gaza. Washington demands the complete dismantling of the nuclear program. The closed strait represents approximately 25% of global maritime oil trade and 20% of global LNG exports - which explains the 3.75% rise in Brent prices overnight. Meduza, which covers the event in a more factual manner, notes that both parties accuse each other of presenting unacceptable conditions, without either side officially breaking the April 8 ceasefire.

In this Russian prism, the conflict ceases to be a bilateral crisis and becomes the symbol of a contested global order: on one side, a power that brandishes its aircraft carriers to regulate the waters of another region, and on the other, a sovereign state that claims the right to control its own coastline. Bagheri's presence in Moscow - and RT's attention to him - suggests that Russia intends to remain an indispensable diplomatic relay, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations in Oman.