West Asia crisis spells tough choices for China, Russia Premium

In the midst of heightened tensions, Iran’s closest partners, Russia and China, have maintained a curious level of distance and ambiguity

The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas’s Politburo and the group’s negotiator, in central Tehran, in July, has pushed Israel and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war. The region is bracing for an Iranian response that is expected to be more violent than the exchange between the two foes in April. However, amidst these heightened tensions, Iran’s closest partners, Russia and China, have maintained a curious level of distance and ambiguity.

The war in Gaza is a regional flashpoint and has been so for decades. But, in 2024, it has also been subsumed into a larger big-power competition between the United States and its western partners on the one side, and a China-led grouping on the other, which, loosely, includes Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Iran has played a central role in this construct, from providing military technical capacity to Moscow in the form of drones for its frontline against Ukraine, and cheap oil for Beijing, which it has used to top-up its strategic reserves.

But both Russia and China have individualistic aims that often diverge from each other. Tehran getting bogged down by a conventional conflict across the region will mean that its capacities will also need bolstering — a demand that may land up on the doorsteps of both Moscow and Beijing. While the two powers have a common aim of undermining, and even dispelling, the U.S.’s hold on West Asian security, they have also individually built their own influence architectures which operate less as a collective, and more at an individual level.

China has been more active diplomatically, from playing a mediator’s role in the normalisation of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March 2023, to, more recently, hosting a group of Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, both of whom have been at loggerheads with each other since 2006. Beijing has remained steadfast and consistent in its support for the Palestinian cause, which it sees from two strategic lenses. First, that of an injustice perpetuated by western colonisation, and second, a general support for Arab positions. In the Chinese press for example, one outlet highlighted Haniyeh as a “pacifist”.

For Russia, the scenario is very different. Moscow has been militarily embroiled in the Syrian conflict since 2015 when the Arab state’s embattled leader, Bashar al-Assad, requested military support to ward off the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State. Since then, Moscow has maintained permanent bases around Latakia province, which also provide it critical access to the Mediterranean. Along with Russia, Iran also stepped in to safeguard the Assad regime, and in return strengthened a web of proxies across the country to secure its own strategic aims.

Despite the convergences mentioned above, there remains one area where China and Russia together continue to align with their western foes — that of a potential nuclearisation of Iran. This concern is more heightened today than it has ever been, as Iran is viewed as a threshold nuclear state, i.e., being very close to attaining weapons capability. The recent successful election of Masoud Pezeshkian, a now tempered moderate President, and his selection of some reformists including familiar names such as Abbas Araghchi as Foreign Minister, may raise hope in the P5+1 capitals that nuclear negotiations could be brought back to life. While this would depend on multiple factors, including the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections in November, access to familiar faces is being seen as a rare upside in an otherwise dire overall scenario. In her analysis prior to the Iranian polls, scholar Yun Sun at the Washington-based Stimson Center had said that China would like an Iranian leader who maintains the country’s anti-West and anti-U.S. position, but perhaps not one that prioritises crossing the proverbial red-line and attaining nuclear weapons.

The Russians, by most accounts, are already more ingrained and aggressive in tactically undermining western power compared to a still risk-averse Beijing. While, strategically, Moscow has managed well with the Global South in maintaining a workable position regarding Ukraine, its intelligence and military apparatus has mobilised in areas such as western Africa to challenge a long-standing American and European presence. In West Asia, recent reports have suggested a Russian intelligence presence in Yemen, to help the Houthis as they disrupt global trade traversing through the Red Sea where even India had to deploy a significant naval presence to protect its ships. These are the regional realities as to why the U.S. remains adamant in preserving its small deployments on the ground in Syria and Iraq. An exit now would look like ceding one of its final bastions of power projection in the region.