War/Sanctions on Iran is now hopeless and dead.

None of the following matters in the end, but I'll say it anyway.

Any U.S. invasion of Iran would be, temporarily, severely damaging to the U.S. economy and, at best, destabilizing to the world economy. These people (these people meaning certain unnecessary to name individuals and parties in the U.S., Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments - if you can call them that) care more about money than anything - more than their countries, more than their people, possibly more than their very lives (though I highly doubt this due to their penchant for cowardice). The foreign and military policies of these nations, for better or worse, are amalgams of the individual ideologies of those individuals and/or parties, and whatever the strategy of the day that will result in the biggest gains for them and those they rely on is. It would not be rational for us to invade Iran, nor would it be rational for Russia or China to oppose us if we did. Nonetheless, sadly, if some kind of genuine long-term gains are seen in such an invasion, even if that is a disastrous miscalculation, I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen.

In the end though, it is true that oil producing nations are indeed the last vestiges of a long dominant energy source that will not be relevant in the long term at all. It is thus far more likely in my opinion that these nations will calculate that because the impact of the looming energy crisis can only be mitigated to a certain (likely insufficient) degree because they have all waited far too long to search for ways to do so, it would be preferable to lose something today that they will lose tomorrow anyway.

In other words, the impacts of the loss of control over a portion of the world’s fossil fuel (either through invasion of Iran or through Iran's own actions), while severe, are inevitable anyway, as is the loss of all fossil fuel on the planet. A war would just bring the impact on China and Russia (and likely much of the rest of the world) much sooner than if things proceeded as they were going to anyway. It is less costly to let someone else (the U.S.) take something from you that you are going to lose anyway and then charge you more for it (or use it as leverage against you), than it is to fight a war to try and keep it, and then subsequently also have to deal with the ramifications of it's eventual total loss, as well as the, while not guaranteed (especially under current policy), nonetheless very possible, U.S. dominance of future energy source technology.

For all the above reasons, I do not see a Chinese or Russian venture to militarily stop the U.S. from invading Iran as being strategically or economically advantageous to either country, or to their allies and business partners.

That said, if you are one who does not buy the WMD reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq (which I shall remain mute with regard to) and hypothetical invasion of Iran, those invasions were not and would not be advantageous to the U.S. for the very same reasons - oil isn't going to matter eventually, and it will make the country and the people running it at the moment much wealthier in the mid and long term if they work towards preparing the economic infrastructure, both physical and conceptual, for the switch-over to new energy technologies. Despite that, we've done it once. We might be irrational enough to do it again, sadly. And if we are, who's to say China and Russia aren't?

None of this matters in the end, though. In the end, as my father is fond of saying, everything can be boiled down to "it either is, or it ain't." Lol. In other words, there will be war, or there won't. Irrespective of its size and scale, any full on military conflict between China and the U.S. or Russia and the U.S. would be disastrous for all concerned. There would be no winner in such a conflict.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein.

[edit on 6-9-2005 by AceWombat04]

[edit on 6-9-2005 by AceWombat04]

[edit on 6-9-2005 by AceWombat04]

Russia and China can get their oil from the US. In order to satisfy both their and the US's internal needs, it will invade Iran. Russia and China will object, but do nothing. Once the US is in control of the oil reserves, Russia and China will join the 'coalition' to 'distribute' it fairly.