WASHINGTON -- Russia, China, and Iran are increasingly creating a strategic alliance of convenience that US policymakers must confront as it seeks to disrupt global order, according to a group of US experts and former officials.Speaking on June 10 at the "America's Adversaries: The Russia Reality" national security briefing organized by the Independent Women's Forum, many of the panelists noted the transactional benefits are already yielding critical strategic dividends, particularly for an otherwise isolated Iranian regime.Driven by their shared opposition to US dominance, the three countries are coordinating diplomatically, integrating their militaries and working on ways to evade Western sanctions."The question is whether there is a strategy of disruption, tactical convenience, or opportunism, or whether it is designed to create a different set of strategic outcomes in terms of the global order," according to a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former deputy national security adviser.
To break the momentum of this axis, she said Washington must stop treating Russia, China, and Iran as separate regional theaters and instead find creative ways to drive wedges into their cooperation."We should make their relationship as difficult as possible," Schadlow urged.Russia, China, and Iran aren't bound by a formal tripartite mutual defense treaty, but their interests have aligned in recent years through conflict.Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, global sanctions have tightened a noose around its economy, forcing it to strengthen ties wherever it can.Similarly, Iran has been under withering sanctions for years, and even more so since the United States and Israel launched air strikes against it on February 28.Beyond domestic survival, this authoritarian synergy is creating a dangerous feedback loop on the battlefield, Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council.Berman, who is also a board member at RFE/RL, adds that while Iran has supplied waves of loitering munitions to fuel Russia's war in Ukraine, Western intelligence agencies fear that the combat data gathered on European soil will soon flow backward, making Iran’s domestic arsenal significantly more lethal."The Iran problem is not just the Iran problem. It's an Iran-Russia-China problem," Berman argued, explaining that Moscow and China have effectively thrown Tehran an economic and technological lifeline to withstand both domestic uprisings and crushing international sanctions.To be sure, some panelists noted that while the cooperation is expanding, relations among Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran remain fundamentally transactional.
