[mookboi]

I've read the whole thread. FWIW, I'm Russian, and I don't agree with Anton.

I also fail to see why so many people are on the "Let's assume Russia, Iran, and the rest of the middle east unite to form an alliance" bandwagon.

WTF? We don't even like the middle easterners (from former southern USSR republics) that are IN Russia, what the hell makes you think we'd ally with a buncha people we went to war with 20 years ago, realizing that we'd effectively be against the US in that war? The middle east is valuable to the US because of oil. Russia has a ton of oil, and while we might go and build some nuclear power plants and ruffle some feathers for economic reasons, I just can't imagine a scenario where we'd go and ally ourselves with Iran if they decided to declare war on the US.

I think the theory that WW3 would start because of Israel getting attacked by like Syria or Iran and the US jumping in to retaliate/defend and basically becoming today's Iraq situation on a much larger scale has so far been the most likely in the thread.