Will Russia and China help Iran in this war?

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Wednesday, the 31st of Tir 1405, July 22, 2026. The flames of war have risen even higher. Last night and today, American attacks covered everything from cities in Ilam province to Behbahan, from Sirik to Shiraz, and all the way to Tehran, where air defense activity was heard across the capital. Today Trump threatened that for every single ship Iran hits in the Strait of Hormuz, we will hit a bridge or a power plant. On Iran's side, too, threats and responses began.

1:01 Majid Mousavi, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, said that if the infrastructure is attacked, a blackout across the region is certain, a threat to strike the infrastructure of the countries of the region. Mr. Araghchi, the foreign minister, said that we will give a decisive response if our infrastructure is attacked, and Mr. Ghalibaf also wrote that if we don't sell oil, no one in the region will sell oil. So we can see that the war of words has also escalated. In fact, it seems that the mediation efforts for a temporary ceasefire, and even the Qatari plan, which proposed a 10-day ceasefire, 10 days devoted solely to discussing this very point of contention, that is, the management of the Strait of Hormuz,

2:02 so that it could reach a conclusion and this ambiguous Article 5 could somehow be clarified. But it seems there is no sign of this ceasefire, and instead things are, as they say, escalating, and tension is rising higher. The staff of the British embassy in Tehran have been recalled and the embassy has been closed, although they said they will continue their work online. It is said this is due to the lack of security and probably events that are on the way. The health minister stated that from the 6th of Tir to the 31st of Tir, 53 people in Iran were killed because of this war

2:58 and 592 people were wounded, although he did not distinguish between military and civilian. On the other side, today the bodies of four American soldiers were returned to America. Three were killed in Jordan, and one in Erbil, Iraq, who was apparently intercepting a drone. Mr. Trump went to the airport with his wife for the ceremony of the transfer of the remains. It is said that America has so far lost at least 18 people killed, and as for the number of American wounded, there has even been talk of 400, but the Pentagon does not publish exact figures.

3:52 On the other hand, the Houthis of Yemen had threatened Saudi Arabia: now that it is blockade for blockade, now that Sanaa airport has been attacked, they threatened the port of Yanbu in western Saudi Arabia, where the East-West pipeline ends and where loading actually takes place. The result was that today four oil tankers changed course, and instead of passing through Bab el-Mandeb, they went up the Red Sea and turned back through the Suez Canal. For this reason, because four tankers changed course, oil today rose above 95 dollars per barrel.

4:53 Another thing that happened around the war today is that Mr. Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee and requested 87.6 billion dollars in supplemental funding for the Pentagon. But this session was accompanied by tension and very heated exchanges. On the one hand, several people in the hall were chanting slogans; among the spectators, four people had placards or were chanting that you should stop killing children in Iran and Palestine and so on. In any case, they were

5:48 escorted out of the hall and the session continued. Mr. Hegseth said that the cost of the war with Iran so far has been 37.5 billion dollars, something that some media outlets such as CNN put a question mark on, arguing that this cost is far higher than that. Some media did the math and said that this war has perhaps cost America more than 100 billion dollars in total so far. In this session, four senators, all four of them Democratic senators from

6:42 the Democratic Party, were sharp with Mr. Hegseth in the questions and answers. The senator from Georgia stated that there are contradictions in your statements, Mr. Secretary of Defense. A few weeks ago you stated that Iran's military had been destroyed, so why are they still firing missiles? The Democratic senator from Michigan said that the cost of the war has reached tens of billions and it is still continuing and has become one of the endless wars. The senator from New York said, do you even have a clear plan for the war with Iran or not, and what is the strategy of this war? This question was perhaps asked of Mr. Hegseth many times in different ways, and of course he did not give a clear answer.

7:40 The senator from Rhode Island also said, why has the security of shipping still not been secured? In any case, this session, which was accompanied by sharp questions and answers, shows that in the US Congress, especially on the Democratic Party side, opposition to this war has grown, especially when the deaths of American soldiers are also involved. Meanwhile, the Reuters news agency, citing four sources, reported that the Russians are helping Iran in targeting CIA centers in the region.

8:36 Of course, this is something American officials say they have not yet reached a final conclusion on, but it is not new. Perhaps this is the umpteenth time it has been raised that both Russia and China are providing intelligence assistance to the Islamic Republic, both through satellites and on the ground, and even helping the Islamic Republic with some air defense parts and so on. This is something that people in America are at least very sensitive about, because it is reminiscent of the Vietnam War and the atmosphere of the Cold War, and it has seriously raised the question of whether

9:31 the war in the Persian Gulf and with Iran will turn into a new Vietnam War or not, although talk of America having to put troops on the ground is not on the table for now, because in that case the war would enter another phase and reaching peace and calm would move even further out of reach. Hoping for the victory of Iran and Iranians. OK.