Will the cooperation between Beijing, Moscow and Tehran become a new 'Eastern bloc', as the military alliance of communist states led by the USSR was called in Europe last century? And what threat does the increasingly close alliance pose to the United States and the West? Today, these questions are among the most popular topics of conversation at international think tanks. The combined population of these three countries totals 1.65 billion. Their joint GDP amounts to $20 trillion (80% of US GDP), and their military budget in 2023 was $415 billion, which represents 50% of the US military budget and 17% of global military spending, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
In the summer of 2023, Tehran joined BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi calling the latter a 'great family of civilisations' that opposes the 'moral decline' of the West. Amid the imposition of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, Moscow has resumed talks with Tehran over the development of the North-South International Transport Corridor, a multimodal cargo freight route between Russia, Central Asia and India. In February 2023, Moscow and Tehran merged their national financial messaging systems, which had previously been blocked by SWIFT.
Experts from the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office note a deeper coordination between the three states in an article for War on the Rocks. In March, Russia, Iran, and China conducted another series of major naval exercises in the Arabian Sea, which, according to Iranian Rear Admiral Mustafa Taj ad-Dini, 'testifies to the emergence of a new alliance for security in the northern part of the Indian Ocean'. The three countries have jointly eliminated their dependence on the American global navigation satellite system GPS: in 2021, the Iranian military gained full access to China's BeiDou satellite navigation system, while Russia continues to work on integrating BeiDou with its own GLONASS system. Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel on the night of 13 April technically followed the same approach that Russia uses for strikes on Ukraine: a combination of drones and different types of missiles are used to oversaturate air defence systems and increase the chance of successfully hitting targets. According to experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), this highlights the depth of military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran. After the attack on Israel was complete, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Tehran to congratulate his Iranian counterparts.
The term 'axis' with various descriptors ('axis of disorder', 'axis of evil 2.0'), referring to George W. Bush Jr'.s 'anti-terrorism' formula and the long-standing designation of Hitler's coalition, has long been used in reference to the new tripartite alliance. Thus, according to the authors of the American magazine The National Review, the three regimes act on the international arena as a single 'axis of autocracy', supporting each other in various conflicts and confrontations. Iran supplies Russia with weapons for the war in Ukraine, Russia helps Iran circumvent international sanctions and finances Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, and it claims to be committed to the 'one China' principle and 'opposes Taiwanese independence in any form'. Beijing has become Russia's main trading partner, supplying it with technological components that are unavailable due to the severing of ties with the West and sanctions.
Russia, Iran, and China are united by the fact that they are all essentially revisionist regimes, writes Michael Mazza from the Global Taiwan Institute in his essay 'Axis of Disorder'. The rhetoric of the three countries is permeated with the desire to break the established rules: the Chinese leader speaks of 'reform of the global system of governance', Russia continues to talk about a multipolar world, and the president of Iran calls on partners to work together to turn the threat from the United States 'into an opportunity for progress', the experts from War on the Rocks note. Renowned historian and columnist Niall Ferguson, in his column for Bloomberg, highlights that 'the most dangerous scenario' of forming just such a tripartite 'anti-hegemonic alliance' was foreseen by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book 'The Grand Chessboard' back in 1997.
However, the idea of Russia, Iran and China as a united front in the fight against the West is an oversimplification of the real picture, write the experts from War on the Rocks. Shortly after joining the SCO, Tehran advocated for greater military cooperation: Iranian Defence Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani proposed that SCO members create a 'Shanghai Maritime Security Belt' to protect trade between members of the organisation. However, this is contrary to Beijing's interests. China has historically avoided joining military alliances, nor would it want to participate in a military alliance with international pariahs, as this would threaten to sever relations with the US. It is precisely the reluctance to anger Washington that has caused Beijing to refrain from granting Iran full membership in the SCO for more than a decade. On the other hand, despite deepening military cooperation with Tehran, Moscow did not provide it with military assistance after the Israeli attack on Iranian facilities in Syria. And, the previously announced deal to supply Tehran with Russian Su-35 fighter jets will not be finalised, the Iranian Defence Ministry has admitted.
Russia opposes the existing world order, but by occupying Ukrainian territories it is trying to regain some of the lands of the former Russian Empire; China would like to restore a China-centric order, at least in its region; Iran seeks to export Shiite Islam, providing Muslims with ideological, military and economic tools to defeat 'imperialists'. Thus, while jointly seeking a revision of the world order and the crushing of American hegemony, they see the results of this revision very differently.
These visions also differ regarding their own allies and partners. Although Russian and Chinese officials have met with Hamas leaders, Moscow and Beijing have sought to maintain working contacts with Israel and have refrained from providing military aid to the Palestinians. In January 2024, China urged Iran to rein in the Houthis who had been attacking merchant ships off the coast of Yemen, but rebels attacked a Chinese merchant ship in March. The Axis countries are also at odds over the treatment of India. Moscow and Tehran would like to strengthen ties with New Delhi to utilise India's potential in any confrontation with the US. Beijing is opposed, seeing India as a major rival in South Asia. In February 2024, India organised a multilateral naval exercise involving Russia, Iran and the US, but China was not invited.
Unlike during the Cold War, the current alliance of Moscow, Tehran, Beijing and to some degree Pyongyang, which opposes the West, lacks a unified ideology beyond anti-Western sentiment, and in this sense, it more closely resembles a marriage of convenience, writes The Washington Post columnist Adam Taylor. The unity of Russia and China during the UN Security Council vote on various issues does not reflect the unity of the existing alliance, but rather the desire of the two states to maximise dividends from the deepening rift in how different countries perceive crises, such as the war in Gaza, the experts from War on the Rocks believe.
However, even if the Russia-China-Iran 'axis' does not turn into a full-fledged defence alliance, these countries are obviously seeking deeper integration, as well as the creation of multilateral partnerships with other states, which threatens the sphere of US interests, War on the Rocks writes. Recent joint naval exercises between Moscow, Tehran and Beijing have invited, among others, Azerbaijan, India, Kazakhstan, Oman, Pakistan and South Africa to be observers, underscoring the Axis countries' desire to expand their influence over states in the global South. Niall Ferguson at Bloomberg argues that a new Cold War is already underway, repeating the narratives of the previous one at an accelerated pace. This time around it may not end as well for the US and the Western alliance. It is not about the strength of the triple alliance, but about America's comparative weakness, compared to the previous Cold War era. Ferguson promotes his own 'Ferguson's Law', according to which a great power ceases to be one the moment its debt service costs exceed its military expenditures. This was the case with the Spanish Empire, with pre-revolutionary France, and with the Ottoman Empire. In the United States, this situation will arise potentially as early as this year, he argues. Whereas during the last Cold War, the cost of debt was 1.8% and military spending was 6.4%. It is this fact that makes the hopes of a weak tripartite alliance for geopolitical success not so unattainable.