Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi delivers a speech on the second anniversary of Quds Force commander General Qasem Soleimani's death in downtown Tehran on January 3, 2022. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Iran's dangerous nuclear weapons program is a point of "shared concern" between Washington and Moscow, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said after meetings with his Russian counterpart last week. But the Biden administration's diplomatic approach ignores the reality that Russia and China see Iran as their Middle East ally in undermining the American-led global order.

In The Wall Street Journal, Hudson's Bryan Clark and Michael Doran debunk the myth that Washington, Moscow, and Beijing share core interests when it comes to Tehran. See below for key takeaways and join us Monday for an event on the prospects of a revived Iranian nuclear deal—along with exciting news about Hudson’s future work on these issues.

Key Takeaways

From Bryan Clark and Michael Doran's Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Why Russia and China Build Up Iran"

1. Strategic Interests Unite Russia, China, and Iran

Washington engages with Beijing and Moscow as if they share core U.S. interests with respect to Iran when, instead, they are working with Tehran to undermine the American-led global order.

That’s certainly what officials in Tehran are saying. Last Wednesday, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said: “In the new world order, a triangle consisting of three powers—Iran, Russia, and China—has formed.” He was clear about the goal: “This new arrangement heralds the end of the inequitable hegemony of the United States and the West.”

2. Iran's Anti-US Stance is an Asset for Russia

Mr. Putin may agree that Iran should never possess nuclear weapons. Cooperating closely with the U.S. to achieve that goal, however, interferes with his more urgent priority, which is to undermine the American-led order...

The day before [Secretary Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov], Russian President Putin hosted Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. In a speech before the Duma, Mr. Raisi discussed “Resistance”—the movement Iran leads to destroy the U.S.-led order in the Middle East. Resistance, he said, drove the Americans from Afghanistan and Iraq, and it also generated “the successful model of cooperation between Iran and Russia in Syria.” In that spirit, Mr. Raisi parroted Mr. Putin’s main grievance with respect to Ukraine. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Mr. Raisi said, “seeks to infiltrate various geographical areas with new alibis that threaten the common interests of independent states.”

3. Tehran: China's Path to Power in the Middle East

Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a similar set of calculations [as Russia]. Thanks to one of history’s most rapid military buildups, China now has Asia’s largest air force, the world’s largest army by number of active-duty troops, and largest navy by number of vessels. ...In the event of war in Taiwan, China will look to Tehran and its proxies to mount threats to shipping—to pin down one or more American carrier groups in the Persian Gulf. But the value of Iran’s “Resistance” doesn’t end there. Beijing is heavily dependent on Middle East oil imports. It aims to protect its long and vulnerable supply lines by toppling the U.S. as the region’s pre-eminent power. 

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.

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