The Unholy Alliance

            How much do the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation have in common? Which of them is worse? Are they both as bad as the other?

        Both are regional and also global troublemakers. Both nations / entities claim that they are different from actual reality for their own reasons. Both Seyyed Ali Hosseini and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin have the same common enemy. This is a unifying factor in skirting around the manner of evil both are inflicting abroad and against their own populations.  

             Reality flies in the face of the instigator of a rather personal War.

               The laughable title of "Special Military Operation" should really be "Putin's War". Deliberately ignoring the dubious nature of the nation he was born in, he has transmogrified the Russian Federation into a nation just as or even more sinister than the former USSR. 
       The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a failure from Red October (a.k.a. Bolshevik Revolution) until its dissolution on Boxing Day 1991. In addition to being economically dysfunctional, President Reagan was highly accurate when he described it as the Evil Empire. Unaware of or choosing to disregard the fact that the Soviet Union defeated itself, regaining the perceived former glory is the sole motivation behind Putin being a global sociopath. Self-delusional in the extreme, anyone who hasn't fallen for the Kremlin's attempts to engineer a domestic persecution complex is thrown in jail or worse.
         Anyone who is brave and smart enough not to fall for this is subject to the practice that he was involved in during the Cold War as a KGB administrator in Dresden. Locking up opponents en masse and even attempts to lethally silence prominent critics, such as Alexei Navalny, demonstrate potential to return to the dark days of the USSR and the gulags.
          The appalling bad loser attempts to portray NATO as a threat trying to impose imperial ambitions. This groundlessness is used as to justify the invasion of Ukraine, reconstructing a Russia that has never existed. He will doubtlessly continue not to care about how many soldiers/ criminally insane prisoners/ civilians are fed through a meat grinder. This could work once Ukraine runs out of ammunition because those aiding the funding thereof will get fed up. While waiting for European nations and the US to stop helping prevent his evil machinations, he is completely indifferent to the growth in the height of the hillock of corpses.

              Iran: instigator of an eternal (and growing) battleground

          Iran is the primary instigator of using theology as a front for picking fights for no good reason, having started when the State of Israel was founded. 
        It is difficult to single out which side is the worst in the conflict from October 7th onwards, because the battleground in the Gaza Strip is an exhibition of disregard for human life.
            Hamas and ISIS have long been beyond ridiculous. Enforcing an ancient mindset from centuries ago entails that women are non-people who are supposed end up being blindly obedient for the purpose of reproduction. Further counterproductive practices are the main motivation for that rampage. The ludicrousness of Hamas comes from selective reading of the Quran which is used as an excuse to justify the unjustifiable, such as suicide bombings. Religious texts as a delusional justification for being inhuman are a pretext beyond the Middle East, despite the worst wrong-doers being based in that region, with Iran as the main supplier, manipulator and string-puller. 

         The abuse of the Quran to widen where it hits is yet another pathetic pre-text for labelling the USA to be the "Great Satan", undoubtedly the motivation behind further missile and drone attacks against Israel. Furthermore, there have been attacks against trading vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthis, who are yet another cover for the dastardly machinations of Iran.  

        All of these could end up being called the Great Missile Exchange. Mutual annihilation is plausible throughout the region, and statements by a smorgasbord of foreign ministers to "avoid escalation" are increasingly fruitless wishes. The sooner that regional players realize that the successor to the individual who coined the term "Great Satan" (1st Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) fits that description more precisely than the US ever has, the sooner the Middle East can return to an acceptable level of objective sanity. 

             Friendly, because of common Enemy / Enemies?

        Just as he has successfully fooled many he has always been hostile to, the former KGB major is engaged in subterfuge of those he doesn't hate (much, or at all). Helping Iran, so it can help Russia in order to destabilize the "West" through the superficially common aim of wearing down the US et cetera is the most efficient means of avoiding loosing Putin's War. He esteems he could prevail as long as his cannon fodder outlasts Ukraine's supply of ammunition. 
          Iran has supplied drones to Russia since October 2022, 1 year before the infamy committed by its own pawn Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Even more than Iran has attempted to, Russia has used them to target infrastructure and civilian areas in Ukraine. Together with missile strikes, the aim has been, and still is, to overwhelm air defenses. 

         Further to battlefields, there is cooperation when it comes to trade, including a major bilateral agreement which is a slightly disguised means of transferring technology. Whenever Iran officially becomes a nuclear weapon state, one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will either be deafeningly silent or actually facilitate it. Just as with Putin for his entire lifespan, Iran could also avoid being held accountable for violating international law or indeed any morality whatsoever. 
        Of the sanctions imposed against both rogue states, Tehran and Moscow are actively circumventing them, thereby weakening the effect thereof. Doubling down on the worst of pre-Gorbachev suppression of protests and independent civilian organization, Russia is crushing them and engaging in mass surveillance of its own people. Iran is doing this as well. Where there are differences, both sides are exchanging best practices in order to be more efficient in treating their respective populaces as figurative doormats.
 
        Human rights, representative governments, leaders responsive to the desires and wishes of their citizens along with transparency have long been invisible in both Russia and Iran. It will always be, unless Putin and Hosseini are swept aside.

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