To the editor:

One big winner of the war with Iran is Russia. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, one response of the West was to impose sanctions on Russian oil.

Most observers agree that those sanctions have severely damaged the Russian economy and thus their ability to prosecute their invasion of Ukraine. But within the first week of the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war, the trump administration eased the sanctions giving the Russians additional $billions in revenue and the administration has refused to reinstate the sanctions.

Another big winner is whoever is making suspicious well-timed oil futures trades just ahead of major Iran war announcements by trump. These trades happened in March and April and have continued in May, netting the traders over $3 billion in profits. I wonder who would be in a position to know how to take advantage of those major announcements?

Still another big winner are the major oil companies, with one study showing American consumers paying them an additional $30 million an hour because of the Iran war.

But the biggest winner is trump himself. Nobody is talking about the Epstein files!

Ron Svaty

Ellsworth