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- The Iran-China-Russia Axis Crumbles When It Matters</p>
<p>Leon AronJune 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM</p>
<p>Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: AFP / Getty.</p>
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<p>As Israel and then the United States battered Iran this month, the reaction from China and Russia was surprisingly muted. For years, shared antagonism toward the U.S. has been pushing China, Russia, and Iran together. All three benefit from embarrassing the West in Ukraine and the Middle East, and widening the gaps between Washington and Europe. So after Israel's first strike, on June 13, China—the strongest partner in the anti-America triad—could have been expected to rush short-range missiles and other air-defense equipment to Iran. Surely, Beijing would use its growing diplomatic muscle to isolate Israel and the U.S., demand an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, and introduce a resolution deploring the two governments that were attacking China's ally.</p>
<p>Instead, recent events in Iran have revealed that anti-Americanism can bind an alliance together only so much.</p>
<p>[Read: Why isn't Russia defending Iran?]</p>
<p>After ritually denouncing Israel's first strike as "brazen" and a "violation of Iran's sovereignty," Beijing proceeded cautiously, emphasizing the need for diplomacy instead of further assigning blame. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi refrained from condemning Israel's actions, in a call with his Israeli counterpart on June 14, and President Xi Jinping waited four days before calling for "de-escalation" and declaring that "China stands ready to work with all parties to play a constructive role in restoring peace and stability in the Middle East."</p>
<p>After Iran's parliament voted to close the Strait of Hormuz, Beijing's foreign-affairs spokesperson stressed—in what looked like a warning to Iran—that the Persian Gulf is a crucial global trade route for goods and energy, and called for partners to "prevent the regional turmoil from having a greater impact on global economic growth."</p>
<p>In calmer times, China, like Russia, is happy to use Iran as a battering ram against the U.S. and its allies. But when tensions turn into military confrontation and global stability is at risk, backing Iran looks like a far less sensible investment to Beijing than preserving its own economic and diplomatic relations with the West. China's mild reaction isn't just a blow to Iran; it may also suggest that the much ballyhooed "no limits" partnership between Xi and Russia's President Vladimir Putin might not be as sturdy as Moscow and Beijing advertise.</p>
<p>Iran, Russia, and China have different ideologies, political regimes, and strategic aims. Iran's relations with its two larger partners are wildly asymmetric.</p>
<p>[Read: The invisible city of Tehran]</p>
<p>China, for example, is Iran's lifeline. It buys about 90 percent of Iran's oil and supplies materials and technologies central to Iran's weapons development. Yet the trading relationship matters less to China, which gets only about 10 percent of its oil from Iran. Plus, China has an economy more than 40 times as large, and it does far more business with the U.S. and the European Union.</p>
<p>Russia has interests that similarly diverge from Iran's, and it, too, has conspicuously refrained from coming to the Islamic Republic's aid. But China following a similar approach toward Iran likely does not please Moscow. Although Moscow's relations with Beijing are less lopsided than Tehran's are, Russia's economy is still less than one-eighth the size of China's. One-third of Russia's state budget comes from oil sales, and China is the largest customer by far. Russia also depends on Chinese supplies for its war machine. This past March, the G7 foreign ministers called China a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war in Ukraine. But should the Kremlin begin to run out of money or soldiers, China's willingness to bail out its ally is very much in doubt.</p>
<p>Even among authoritarian regimes, differences in values can limit cooperation. In 2023, Xi called Russia's 1917 October Revolution a "cannon blast" that "brought Marxism-Leninism to China, demonstrating the way forward and offering a new choice for the Chinese people who were seeking a way to save China from subjugation." Putin, despite his formative years in the Soviet-era KGB, now laments the fall of the Russian empire and describes Vladimir Lenin's coup as the deed of "political adventurists and foreign forces" who "divided the country and tore it apart for selfish benefit." The head of China's Communist Party may resent Putin's reduction of its Russian counterpart—the country's second-largest party—to the status of another bit player in Russia's rubber-stamping parliament.</p>
<p>Since World War II, leaders of Western democracies have successfully collaborated in part because they have shared a common worldview. Whether Iran's Islamic theocrats can say the same about Xi, the leader of an avowedly atheist state, or Putin, who now positions himself as the champion of Orthodox Christianity, is another question entirely.</p>
<p>Beijing's response to Iran's predicament ought to make the West feel cautiously optimistic. If Donald Trump finally learns to distinguish the aggressor from the victim—or at least realizes that Putin has been playing him—the U.S. president could support Ukraine in earnest without worrying much about China expanding its assistance to Russia. As long as both Iran and Russia keep providing cheap oil and antagonizing the West and its allies, they are serving China's purposes. But at least for now, Beijing looks unlikely to back either of its supposed partners if they jeopardize China's interest in stability or its extensive and profitable relations with the West.</p>
<p>Article originally published at The Atlantic</p>
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