As US and Israeli strikes on Iran entered their second day, the dominant theme emerging from Moscow's military and analytical establishment is one of deep scepticism — not about the firepower being deployed, but about what it can realistically achieve. Russian experts and commentators are broadly united in their assessment that while "Operation Epic Fury" and "Operation Lion's Roar" may degrade Iranian capabilities; they are unlikely to bring down the Islamic Republic. The Kremlin, for its part, has already called for a return to diplomacy. What Russia sees unfolding in the Middle East is less a decisive strike than the opening of a costly, open-ended confrontation — one that could trap Washington in a conflict it has neither the regional resources nor a clear endgame to manage.
The Opening Strikes and Iran's Response
On the morning of 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated attacks against Iran. According to Izvestia, the initial assault targeted Iran's air defence infrastructure — radars, command posts, and surface-to-air missile batteries. The US deployed cruise missiles while Israel used aero-ballistic missiles, which are particularly difficult for air defence systems to intercept. Iran responded almost immediately, launching ballistic missiles at Israeli territory and US military bases across the Gulf — in Bahrain (including the 5th Fleet headquarters), Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Houthi forces in Yemen joined the offensive against the Tel Aviv area with cruise missiles, some of which reportedly reached their targets. Iran's Red Crescent reported over 200 killed and more than 700 wounded on Iranian soil.
No Ground Force, No Regime Change
The centrepiece of Russia's scepticism is blunt and structural. Lieutenant Colonel Roman Shkurlatov, chairman of the "Officers of Russia" organisation, told *Izvestia* that a large US ground force would have been spotted by intelligence assets long before any offensive — and no such force was detected. Without one, he argued, "Washington cannot achieve its key objective: regime change in Iran." He described Iran as a large, resilient state with a developed military-industrial complex, a robust missile programme, and high morale within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The strikes, in this reading, can punish but not transform.
Military analyst Boris Dzherelievsky went further, warning that the Americans risk walking into a serious trap if they fail to achieve rapid results. "Instead of a blitzkrieg, they may get a far more serious conflict," he told Izvestia. "Iran is a cohesive and powerful country." The most likely scenario both experts foresee is a war of attrition: alternating waves of heavy missile strikes with pauses dictated by the need to replenish munitions at shore bases — a grinding campaign that falls well short of the decisive outcome Washington appears to be seeking.
The Deeper Strategic Logic — and Its Contradictions
Writing in Kommersant, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, provides the broader geopolitical frame — and reinforces Moscow's doubts from a different angle. He draws an explicit parallel with "Shock and Awe," the 2003 US campaign against Iraq, noting that it produced sweeping changes, but not the ones Washington intended. The collapse of the old Middle Eastern order generated a cascade of dangerous problems that consumed ever-greater American resources with ever-diminishing returns. The rise of Iran to its current level of regional influence, Lukyanov pointedly notes, was itself largely a consequence of that campaign.
He identifies two sets of motivations behind the current offensive. Israel is exploiting what it sees as a uniquely favourable geopolitical alignment to entrench itself as the region's dominant military power, expecting neighbours to adapt accordingly. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is pursuing an explicitly transactional agenda: Israeli military dominance combined with Gulf-Israeli commercial integration would allow Washington to act as a "dispatcher" of economic benefits — primarily its own — while placing Chinese, Russian, and Indian geo-economic projects under American leverage and demonstrating the ineffectiveness of multilateral forums like the SCO and BRICS built without US participation.
Yet Lukyanov is deeply sceptical of the plan's feasibility. The current "transactional" approach, while more openly mercenary than the democracy-promotion rationale of the Iraq era, risks producing the opposite of its intended effect: awakening precisely the hostile ideological forces that thrive on resistance to external coercion. A plan built around material returns, he suggests, may end up generating the most durable and dangerous form of blowback — ideological mobilisation.
Domestic Pressures and Global Fallout
Lukyanov adds a pointed observation about Trump's domestic calculus. The president launched a major military operation without Congressional authorisation, against public opinion, and with the real prospect of American casualties. "He needs a triumph to reverse unfavourable trends at home," Lukyanov writes in *Kommersant*. Whether he achieves it or not is almost beside the point: a success could make the administration even more aggressive internationally, while a setback might trigger compensatory belligerence. Either way, the analyst concludes, "the region is entering a new phase of upheaval that will reverberate far beyond its borders — and bodes well for no one".
On the diplomatic front, Izvestia reports that President Putin convened an emergency session of Russia's Security Council on 28 February to discuss the situation, while the Foreign Ministry called on all parties to "return to political and diplomatic settlement" and offered Russian mediation — a posture consistent with Moscow's broader message: that military force alone cannot resolve what is fundamentally a political crisis.
Photo: Manus