China, Iran, and Russia ‘Working Closely Together’ to Undermine US: Experts

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 21, 2023. (MIKHAIL TERESHCHENKO/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

The authoritarian regimes of China, Iran, and Russia are increasingly coordinating as a unified power bloc, according to several experts.

All three countries seek to undermine the United States and reshape the international order in their own image, according to Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank.

To that end, the cooperation of the three regimes is magnifying the effects of their malign actions in an outsized way, she said.

“This interplay between Russia, China, and Iran amplifies the threats that they pose to the United States,” Kendall-Taylor said during a June 6 talk about the new “authoritarian Axis” at the Washington-based CNAS.

“By working together, the challenges they pose collectively add up to be more than the sum of their parts in any one individual challenge if they were working on their own.”

Catalyzed by Ukraine Invasion

The three regimes were emboldened by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, which acted as a “catalyst” for increased cooperation against the international order, Kendall-Taylor said.

Such cooperation allowed the “Axis” powers to “move out more belligerently and aggressively” against the United States and its allies and partners, acting on a shared “hostility” toward the rules-based international order, she said.

Now, the three powers are working together across the diplomatic, economic, and military domains, as well as in each of their respective regions.

Russia and China have signed a “no limits” partnership that includes strategic military cooperation. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, has done its best to keep the Russian economy afloat without drawing international sanctions onto itself.

Russia and Iran continue to ink new defense agreements. Iran is providing Russia with hundreds of suicide drones for use in Ukraine, while Russia, in turn, is selling the Islamist regime fifth-generation fighter jets and other advanced capabilities.

Sino–Iranian agreements have also begun to proliferate, with Beijing allegedly going so far as to conspire to deliver parts for weapons of mass destruction to Tehran.

Aligning to Subvert International Order

China, Iran, and Russia are also working to break up U.S. influence abroad, according to Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow at CNAS specializing in Middle East issues.

By encouraging U.S. security partners such as Saudi Arabia to stay on the sidelines of global competition, the powers are degrading the U.S. position, Lord said. The CCP, in particular, seeks to attack U.S. influence through “asymmetric means” in the Middle East in order to demonstrate that “it’s not the U.S.’s world anymore,” he said.

That effort was having “immediate” and “major impacts” on the United States’ ability to project power and wield influence abroad, he said.

That could present a unique threat to U.S. preeminence, as the CCP moves to make its influence ubiquitous throughout the Middle East.

“Iran and Beijing are clearly working closely together to strengthen both of their spheres of influence in the Middle East to the detriment of other powerful actors,” Lord said.

“China is ever present in the UAE and elsewhere in the [Persian] Gulf in economic projects and assuredly, whether covert or not, in military projects as well.”

By coordinating their efforts, the regimes hope to indirectly push the United States out of the Middle East, clearing the way for a day when it becomes impossible for the United States to effectively operate in the region, he said.

“We see it on a strategic level,“ Lord said. ”We see it on a tactical level. But there’s no question that the cooperation we’re seeing between Moscow, Tehran, and Beijing in a military-security capacity makes all three stronger.”

China Seeks to Dominate Junior Partners

The nascent trilateral Axis isn’t without its faultlines. Most notable among them is the CCP regime’s desire to subsume Iran and Russia under its own aspirations.

Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at CNAS whose focus is on Indo-Pacific affairs, says that aspect of the Axis’ dynamics is one of its weakest points and should be exploited by the United States.

“For Beijing, some degree of weakness in its partners is actually a feature, not a bug,” he said.

“China wants to be, at a minimum, first among equals. And, at a maximum, the dominant power with a veto over the affairs of what we could describe as client states.”

Beijing wants to avoid Moscow and Tehran becoming so close as to counterbalance its economic and diplomatic expansions in the Middle East, while also avoiding a “a complete collapse of its partners” that would cause it to lose the advantage of working with a bloc, according to Stokes.

“Despite its rhetoric to the contrary, China doesn’t actually seek multipolarity,” he said.

“Instead, what China wants is a bipolar system where partners align under a China-led pole against the United States.”

Stokes also said the heavy-handed authoritarianism of the three powers also works against the Axis and its long-term goals. The continuous display of such totalitarianism is leading the world’s democracies to reinvest in their alliances, he said.

“Increased China–Russia cooperation is actually driving liberal democracies to work closely with one another and to actually revitalize their alliances with the United States or their security agreements with the United States and, in a network sense, with one another,” he said.