RUSSIA PERSPECTIVE

Moscow positions itself as Tehran's advocate on two fronts at once. Diplomatically, in Vienna, Russia, China and Niger voted against the IAEA resolution demanding that Iran cooperate and grant access to its nuclear sites — a text adopted anyway by 21 votes. Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov denounced a document that is merely 'a farce,' accusing Washington of 'shifting responsibility for the problems caused by the aggressor onto the victim of that aggression.' Militarily, foreign-ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said she was 'extremely concerned about the new round of US-Iranian armed conflict, which began with the unprovoked US-Israeli aggression against Iran,' and called strikes on civilian infrastructure 'categorically inadmissible.' Pro-Kremlin analysts spin another thread: Iran's 'trump card' against its enemies is supposedly 'popular support' for its government, and Washington 'has the power to stop Israel' but declines to use it. On state channels the tone is sharper: RT runs Trump's line — 'the Bully of the Middle East is dead' — as evidence of an America that talks big but is bogging down. For Moscow, every day of war in the Gulf pulls the spotlight away from Ukraine, rattles an oil market to the benefit of its own barrels, and reinforces its thesis of a West acting outside international law.