How Russia and China are winning the war in Iran

The expanding war in Iran is disrupting, if not devastating, the global economy. Meanwhile, the sound of silence from normally voluble leaders of China and Russia is telling. From their point of view, silence is the best way for them to let Washington entangle itself in a protracted war in the Middle East, opening space to expand the influence of President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Europe and for President Xi Jinping of China in the Indo-Pacific.Iran’s strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz using naval mines, coastal missile batteries, and drone swarms is holding the global economy hostage as energy prices have surged. If the US plan with Iran was to mirror the Venezuela playbook by achieving a swift, overwhelming action to remove a perceived threat and declare victory, it has backfired horribly.Meantime, China and Russia are sitting on the sidelines. Why? China is dependent on Iran, which supplies 13 percent of China’s oil imports at discounted prices. Since 2021, Iran has been locked into a 25-year cooperation agreement with Beijing, securing $400 billion of oil at below-market prices in exchange for Chinese investment and security cooperation. Russia, for its part, has relied on Iran as its most important Middle Eastern partner since Western sanctions on Russia began in 2014. Both countries had been propping up Tehran financially, militarily, and diplomatically for years. Yet their response to the strikes amounts to little more than condemnations of the US.One would expect more from Moscow and Beijing. But their muted response is not a mistake. It is a strategic calculation: why interrupt a war waged by the US as it is getting stuck in an expensive quagmire in the Middle East? Both Russia and China are benefiting from this war in many ways.This is a reprint. This article was also published by Peterson Institute for International Economics.