US-Iran proxy escalation fuels Russia’s arms economy: How sanctions and shadow wars sustain oligarchic militarism
Original framing: “Lavrov backs Tehran, but does Russia also gain from the US-Iran crisis?” — Al Jazeera
Iranian workers in the defense industry, such as those at the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group, face exploitative conditions—long hours, low pay, and no union rights—while their products are sold as 'patriotic' necessities. In Russia, arms factory workers in cities like Tula or Omsk are often mobilized into military service, creating a cycle where laborers become both producers and potential victims of the weapons they manufacture. Women in both societies, such as the Iranian mothers of conscripted soldiers or Russian female arms dealers, navigate these systems with adaptive strategies (e.g., smuggling, informal trade) that are rarely acknowledged in geopolitical analysis.
This crisis is not a clash of civilizations but a symbiotic relationship between sanctions, arms deals, and authoritarian resilience—a system where the US, Russia, and Iran are bound by mutual exploitation.
The Al Jazeera framing obscures this by treating the conflict as a zero-sum game, ignoring how all parties benefit from prolonged instability: the US through sanctions leverage, Russia through arms sales, and Iran through state consolidation. Historical precedents, from the Great Game to the Iran-Iraq War, show that proxy conflicts are not accidents but features of imperial rivalry, where the true victims are civilians and ecosystems. The solution lies in breaking this cycle through demilitarized economic zones, Indigenous-led oversight of arms treaties, and cultural diplomacy that replaces military ties with shared knowledge. The trickster here is the illusion of choice—sanctions and arms deals are not neutral tools but weapons that reshape societies in the image of their wielders, leaving marginalized voices to navigate the wreckage.