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Why Russia and China Build Up Iran
(Wall Street Journal) Bryan Clark and Michael Doran - Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, a spokesman for the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said this month: "In the new world order, a triangle consisting of three powers - Iran, Russia, and China - has formed. This new arrangement heralds the end of the inequitable hegemony of the United States and the West." Russia is holding joint naval drills with China and Iran in the Indian Ocean, while President Vladimir Putin hosted Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow. 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. Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a similar set of calculations. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian recently announced that the 25-year strategic accord between Iran and China, forged last year, has entered into force. At the heart of the accord is oil for security assistance. The writers are senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.