The American-Israeli war against Iran is still raging, and US President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform earlier this week that he had ordered the US Central Command to attack Iran’s Kharg Island, a main storage area for oil.
He added that out of what he termed “decency” he had not ordered the Island’s complete destruction, but he said that if Iran retaliated and continued to close the Strait of Hormuz, he would reconsider his position.
In the light of the ongoing escalation on the part of the American and Israeli military in the attacks on Iran, one of the most important questions relates to the positions of both Russia and China vis-à-vis the constant and systematic destruction of a sovereign country through what in some areas has been indiscriminate carpet bombing.
The question gains added importance when we factor in the fact that the two great powers concerned have had privileged relations with Iran and that these have been enshrined in the signing of separate agreements of strategic partnership with it.
The question is relevant, and it may be necessary to evaluate, on the one hand, the resources and capacity of Iran to withstand the intense bombing campaign carried out by the Americans and Israelis and, on the other, how far Russia and China might provide assistance of any kind to Iran. The American-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran is being well-orchestrated by the military commands of both countries to the extent that each has liaison officers sitting in the operations rooms of the other.
Why do Russia and China not come to the rescue of Iran? Why do they not help Iran militarily and economically to deter further attacks and pressure the American administration to change its strategic calculus and opt for an off-ramp solution that would end the war?
In order to find a plausible answer to these questions, we need to draw a clear distinction between two main issues. The first centres on the power politics among the United States, Russia, and China, and the second is the nature of Russian-Iranian relations and Chinese-Iranian relations.
Russia and China, the two main strategic competitors of the United States both today and probably for decades to come, privilege the way they manage their relations with the United States over any other consideration, including their bilateral relations with Iran. For both of them, engaging with the United States “peacefully” and through various levels of interaction and dialogue, strategic, political, military, economic, and commercial, is much more important than siding or appearing to be side with Iran against the United States.
This does not mean that neither country is not aiding Iran in an indirect and more subtle way than it might appear, but such aid has a threshold that both of these great powers would hesitate to cross. The reason is that neither wants to enter into a direct confrontation of a military kind, even if indirect, with the Trump administration. Both Russia and China need to deal with the United States on many issues, whether in the context of their respective bilateral relations or in dealing with geo-strategic challenges that weigh heavily on their own national security interests.
For Russia, cooperating with the United States to end the war in Ukraine on acceptable terms to Russia is a much more pressing strategic priority than risking a backlash from the American president personally and from his administration over Iran. The major interest of Russian President Vladimir Putin is to keep his “friendly” dialogue with Trump going on smoothly without any unnecessary irritant.
Three days ago, the United States decided to waive its sanctions on the “shadow” oil exports of Russia for 30 days. Would it have taken such a decision if Moscow had decided to send advanced air-defence systems, for example, to Iran during the ongoing war against it?
Putin wants to help Trump end the war on acceptable and “honourable” terms for both the United States and Iran. He recently held an hour-long telephone conversation first with Trump and then with the Iranian president. Commenting on his call with Trump, Putin said he had discussed ideas related to ending the military conflict in the Gulf. While he did not call it an attempt at mediation, it looks like mediation in other terms.
Putin may also not find it useful, from the Russian standpoint, to end the rift between the US administration and Europe, particularly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. In order to do so, the Russian calculation is to limit its support for Iran to publicly calling for an immediate ceasefire and the resumption of the nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.
As far as China is concerned, the same logic of the preponderance of national security interests holds true. If in the case of Russia the present moment is the most relevant in engaging with the United States, in the case of China it is both the present and the future that are of great concern.
In the present there is a year-long truce in the tariff war with the United States, agreed at a summit meeting last year between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump is also scheduled to pay an official visit to Beijing next month, and the Chinese president has already received an official invitation to visit Washington in the autumn. China is also hosting an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in the last quarter of this year.
When it comes to the future, and here we are talking about medium and long-term perspectives, the Taiwan question is the most important element in the way China conducts its overall relations with the United States.
The Chinese president has made it clear on many occasions that any grave violation of the One China Policy by aiding Taiwan militarily or siding with pro-independence supporters in Taiwan would entail a military retaliation on the part of China. But the Chinese also realise that some American strategists plan to go to war with China before it becomes a major naval power capable of confronting the American Navy and have predicted that China is preparing an attack on Taiwan in 2027, one year before Trump’s second and last term in office ends.
Helping Iran deter the combined American-Israeli military attacks against it would be highly risky for the Chinese in terms of their relations with the United States.
I do not rule out the Iranians developing a realistic assessment of how far the Russians and the Chinese might go to defend them or that they have drawn up strategies to cope with another war unleashed on their country in the light of it.
This war and the way Russia and China have dealt with it should be a wake-up call for the world’s middle powers not to count on the great powers to protect them against external threats or the use of force, since the dynamics of the relations among the great powers have their own logic that is separate from their relations with others.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 March, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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