Earlier this week President Putin weighed in on America's Iran operations, and as we detailed his comments were predictably a bit guarded. He had compared the war and the Hormuz Strait closure - and subsequent impact on global energy - to the massive widescale impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. But fundamentally he highlighted the "unpredictable" nature of the conflict in terms of where it's headed, as Washington appears to be searching for an offramp on its terms.
On Friday Dmitry Medvedev weighed in, and as expected the former Russian president and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council was much less guarded in his assessment. He warned at a moment thousands of US Marines and Airborne troop are en route to the Middle East that if the US enters a ground war in Iran it will be another "Vietnam".
American boots on the ground so far from US shores "threatens roughly the same consequences as what happened in Vietnam," Medvedev said as quotes in NBC and others.
"When Washington intervened in a foreign country, located a thousand miles away, and for ten years was unable to find a dignified way out of this conflict," he told the state-run RIA news agency.
He added that a potential ground operation in Iran would have "fatal consequences" for the broader region and for all involved in the war.
Size comparison: Vietnam overlaying Iran
The White House has been insistent that Trump's Iran "excursion" is not a quagmire. It has especially been Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth who has repeatedly denied that this conflict can be comparable to the start of 'forever wars' in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But clearly the US doesn't have good track record when its forces must endure extended asymmetric warfare and insurgency conditions. Yet that's exactly where things will likely head if the White House introduces ground forces.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has actually seized on this historic theme as well, earlier writing on X: "Americans haven’t forgotten how (in 1967), even as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were dying in Vietnam, and the outcome was already clear, General William Westmoreland was flown home to reassure everyone that the war was going well - that the U.S. was ‘winning’."
"The media haven’t forgotten either; those briefings full of fantasy from the frontlines became infamous as the ‘Five O’Clock Follies’," he said. The "same script, different stage" is now unfolding, Araghchi insisted, adding: "Hegseth steps up, and the message is still detached from reality."
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