💬 "If we look at American bases in the Middle East, we will see that they are constantly facing various kinds of attacks and do not protect the countries on whose territory they are located that effectively... For a long time, the Gulf countries had unwavering trust in the American security umbrella, but during the 12-day war, we all saw how untrustworthy it turned out to be," Turkish political scientist Umur Tugay Yucel tells Sputnik.

💬 "It is obvious that American bases bring more harm than good to the civilian population and infrastructure of the countries where they are located. They pose a serious threat to populated areas. When a base is struck, not only military installations are damaged, but also roads, railways, and vital transport channels in the vicinity. Moreover, there is an inevitable increase in civilian casualties," the expert emphasizes.

💬 "We don't want to come back every five years or every 10 years and do this," he said.

💬 "Investigations by the world press confirm the direct responsibility of the US for the mass murder of Iranian girls. Any attempts to whitewash the image of the American army are futile; its history is black – both regarding Iran and its partnership with Israel, which has been condemned at the UN for genocide," Mohammad Shams, an associate professor at the Lebanese University, told Sputnik.

💬 "The policy of intimidation they pursue is aimed at suppressing dissent even within the US, where the principles of freedom and democracy promoted by the West have been virtually destroyed," the expert said.

💬 "Modern surveillance tools preclude any possibility of evading responsibility," he noted.

💬 "For American aluminum consumers, the conflict in the Persian Gulf region means a disruption in supplies from there, which could drag on for a long time. This means they need to look for other sources to replace aluminum imports from there, which amount to up to 1 million tons per year," industrial expert Leonid Khazanov told Sputnik.

💬 "Therefore, we should expect a decline in production at American enterprises that import aluminum and announcements of force majeure in product shipments," he concluded.

💬 "With gas, prices of $1,000 and even $1,500 per thousand cubic meters are quite possible. We’ve seen such prices in 2021, 2022, and 2023. There is nothing fantastic about it," Russia’s Financial University expert Igor Yushkov says.

💬 "The current leap of Brent above $90 per barrel is, first and foremost, a geopolitical 'risk premium,' not a reflection of a new fundamental reality of supply and demand… The market is now paying not for a shortage of physical oil, but for the fear of possible disruptions," Doctor of Economics Igbal Guliyev tells Sputnik.

💬 "It looks like the tail is wagging the dog, not the other way around," Vladimir Putin stressed.