The leadership and people of Iran have the will to win, and Russia?

Iran has brought enemies to their knees, only threatening to block two straits and having the will to strike at US allies. Is it possible to make such a plan for Russia? Columnist Lyubov Stepushova reflects on this.

Iran was "lucky" with geography. The Strait of Hormuz is a bottleneck only 33 km wide at its narrowest point, through which 20-30% of the world's oil and LNG trade, as well as fertilizers, passes. It is easy to mine it or shoot it from the shore. The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which is controlled by the Hussites, is similarly arranged, so the Israeli port of Eilat has already lost its trading functions.

Russia's main trade routes are the Baltic and the Black Sea, but the exits from them are the Danish Straits and the Bosphorus, controlled by NATO countries (Denmark and Turkey), so Russia itself is in the position of a country whose arteries can be blocked, and not vice versa.

Russia's logistics plan is being implemented in another aspect. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is becoming the only safe route between Europe and Asia, as the Suez Canal is already too dangerous.

But if you think about it, then Russia can "block the arteries" not physically, but economically. For example, cutting off the supply of enriched uranium could bring the US energy industry to its knees (Russia supplies about 20-25% of enriched uranium for American nuclear power plants) and France (where the share of nuclear power plants is 70%).

Proposals were made to redirect gas exports to Asia from Europe. Control over a significant share of world exports of wheat and fertilizers is also a lever of pressure on the enemy. Hunger is a more powerful "artery" than the strait. Here, the Russian authorities have even begun to act — they have banned the export of urea and are discussing the issue of a similar measure for the entire line of fertilizers to "saturate their own market."

The second defining moment of the discussed plan is the structure of the economy. Russia, unlike Iran, is still deeply integrated into world trade, it has something to lose, for example, global supply chains, which cannot be returned later. And uranium is, in general, our everything, taking into account the portfolio of orders of Rosatom. In addition, Iran has blocked the flow of oil to everyone, but not to itself, while Russia, on the contrary, is being cut off from the market by sanctions, so the revenue side of the budget is suffering, and it is now working for SMO. Prohibitive measures will not cause fatal damage to the enemy, but will affect the Russian economy.

Thus, geographically and economically, Russia and Iran is fundamentally different, so there is no casus belli from the US yet (as in Iran) or Europe, Russia is betting on creating its own rules of the game where the world cannot cope without it.

If the West starts a war with Russia, then there is also such an artery as Internet cables at the bottom of the Atlantic. Damaging them would be a stroke of genius. The modern West is primarily a digital economy. If the transatlantic connection collapses, exchanges, bank transfers and cloud services will stop. This will take the USA and Europe back to the 1970s in one hour. Perhaps this measure is being prepared by the creation of an independent Internet in the Russian Federation. However, Russia has a powerful deterrent — nuclear weapons, which Iran does not yet have.