By Jeremy Kinsman

April 1, 2026

The question “Cui bono – who gains?” was a Roman judicial construct popularized by Cicero. Lenin made it famous in his 1913 article in Pravda on Russian society, “Who Stands to Gain?”

The question has served for centuries as a starting point for evaluating strategic options. The prediction of unintended consequences has often served as a check point on the overly ambitious intentions of impetuous leaders.

Was the question asked at all in Washington before Donald Trump’s reckless decision to attack Iran on February 28? If so, answers that the attack would swiftly gift U.S. advantage were certainly wrong.

First, dispense with the pretence of a compelling and justifiable motive. The notion that it was a pre-emptive strike in anticipation of a sudden attack by Iran itself is nonsense. President Trump decided the US should accompany Israel in striking Iran in a massive sneak attack to take advantage of the Iranian regime’s weakness.

After the targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders and massive first strikes on key targets, administration sources predicted March 1 and 2 that the regime would fall in 4-5 days. Evidently, Trump believed the decapitation and damage done to Iran by the U.S. air and missile bombing campaign would be enough to constitute a “win,” prompting Americans to rally round the flag.

But like many ambitious attackers in history, Trump underestimated his foes. The regime did not collapse, but hardened, as its defences adapted to a prepared “mosaic” system of decentralized autonomous command. Iran possessed more missiles and drones than predicted. Trump’s boast that “we got 90%” of the missiles did not sync with Iran’s ability to keep firing.

The U.S. side did not anticipate that for leverage, Iran would attack the Gulf Emirates, which were ostensibly neutral, thereby widening the war and increasing its costs and the stakes. Even graver was U.S. negligence in not anticipating that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, interdicting 20% of the world’s trade in oil, upending global markets.

How come US plans missed the risks? In his second administration, Trump no longer employs advisers with experience, duty-bound to advise the President to consider such obvious consequences, as Generals Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis had done in Trump’s first administration.

Secretary of Defense (aka “War”) Pete Hegseth is a superficial hothead appointed because he impressed Trump as a TV talk-show performer on Fox News. Top military adviser Gen. Dan “Razin'” Caine was leapfrogged into the Joint Chiefs chair as a four-star general when Trump ousted Gen. Charles Brown, who was a Biden holdover. Caine is a hard-driving ex-fighter pilot chosen in the expectation of his willingness to expedite the Commander-in-Chief’s decisions.

The decisions have certainly failed politically. It is rare that a majority of the U.S. public would oppose a war at its very outset. The most unpopular president in a century has not got a polling bump for a war that still has no end in sight but does deliver gas at U.S. pumps at $4.00 a gallon, an increase on average of $1.00 in a month.

Meanwhile, Trump’s declarations of objectives lurch from one thing to another, from confidence that a “deal” is within grasp to threats to obliterate Iran’s electricity grid, and even desalination plants, a war crime that could wreck civilian life.

A classic great-power technique when in difficulty in one part of the world is to create a diversion in another. Trump has gifted Putin such a diversion.

The lives of most of Iran’s 92 million inhabitants are already in a state of psychological trauma from the harshly repressive Islamist regime, apt now to be more hard-line than ever.

So, who does gain from this unnecessary war of choice?

Easy answer: Vladimir Putin.

Two months ago, Putin’s destructive and criminal invasion of Ukraine was in trouble. In four years of war, Russian forces had enlarged their occupation of Ukraine by only 2%, from 18% to about 20%. Midpoint estimates of Russians killed and wounded are 800,000 to 900,000 wounded or missing, and 230,000 to 400,000 killed (The Economist).

Whereas the wartime economy initially seemed beneficial to the population, sanctions on Russian energy exports and a decline in the world price of energy had strained Russian finances. Despite Putin’s obsessive will to achieve victory, the notion that time was inevitably on Russia’s side looked uncertain.

But the US/Israel attack on Iran and the foreseeable widening and prolongation of the war is a godsend to Putin. The longer the Iran war continues, the better it is for Russia.

The global price of oil that finances Russia’s war in Ukraine has risen more steeply in a month than ever before, bestowing a windfall of about $5-6B a month for Russia’s military, for which the increased cash flow is easily applied.

Trump has removed sanctions on the sale of Russian oil based on the rationale asserted by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that it will lower the spiking price of oil globally.

Oil experts predict that even if the war were to end tomorrow, it would take six months to bring the Brent and Texas oil prices back toward the $60/barrel range. Russian war finances have become again sound, favouring the long war in Ukraine everyone in authority in the West presumes to have been Putin’s intention.

A classic great power technique when in difficulty in one part of the world is to create a diversion in another. Trump has gifted Putin such a diversion, drawing attention from the urgencies of Ukraine’s defence with an unplanned, deeply costly war on Iran that threatens to metastasize.

Zelensky warns that Ukraine does not have the resources to fight a much longer war. Having brutally ceased to aid Ukraine financially or militarily, the U.S. meant to continue to make vital munitions available to European members of NATO to buy and then supply to Ukraine, but U.S. attacks on over 12,000 targets in Iran have so depleted U.S. stocks that this undertaking may no longer be possible.

In other words, this war may have been launched, at least in part, to alter the outcome of another one.

Ukraine has to depend on the political will and economic feasibility of NATO countries to sustain vital assistance. In line with opposition to U.S. aid for Ukraine in Trump’s MAGA base, ultra-right European opposition parties (that Trump, Vance, etc., support) also object to aid from their European governments.

European treasuries are already challenged at a time of economic sluggishness by Trump’s unilateral tariffs, and the obsessive 5% of GDP committed to defence at Trump’s insistence. The 2025 NATO Summit agreed to 5% by 2035 in order to give Trump a “win” that could help keep the U.S. a committed trans-Atlantic security partner. Meanwhile, Trump almost daily insults European NATO allies, most recently and especially the UK, blasting Keir Starmer for not helping unblock the Strait of Hormuz, which is only blocked because of a war on Iran that Britain does not support.

Putin’s most extravagant dream has been to engineer a split between the U.S. and NATO allies. European members of NATO kept that from occurring. Now, Trump has provoked it. In his first term, he let it be known he wasn’t convinced that the U.S. should be bound by Article 5 security guarantees. Now, he wonders if NATO is needed at all. What sweet music to Putin’s ears, though he may be missing the point that Trump’s behaviour and recklessness have unified Europe.

It all adds another cui bono question. Why does Trump repeatedly play to Putin’s hand? Is it a matter of Putin having something on the U.S. president, or having put something in his head, that compels Trump to act against U.S. interests and policy that have guided America and the “free world” for over 75 years?

The question that had long fuelled secret speculation is becoming an open diplomatic preoccupation, vital to all.

Policy Columnist Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.