How To Take Iran Out Of The Eurasian Entente
The pieces are in place to deal a decisive blow against Iran and, by extension, its Russian and Chinese compatriots.
China, Russia, and Iran have congealed into a Eurasian Entente with diplomatic, economic, and military dimensions. Rather than trying to split apart the bloc’s constituent members with carrots or sticks, Washington should seek to expel the bloc’s weakest member, Iran.
As the second Trump administration begins its tenure, it finds itself navigating a troubled and turbulent world. The Russo-Ukrainian war rages on, with Russia making steady progress on the battlefield at enormous human cost. While the conflict’s epicenter remains in Ukraine, significant action has also occurred in Russia and the Black Sea. Russia continues to use Iranian drones to pummel Ukrainian cities, and legions of North Koreans have deployed alongside Russian forces. In the Middle East, Israel and Hamas are now several weeks into the first phase of a temporary ceasefire, which may transition into a more durable one but could also collapse at any moment.
The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire reached in November has been extended for another several weeks, but tensions continue to flare in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, in the weeks leading up to the Gaza ceasefire, the Yemeni Houthis continued to fire drones and ballistic missiles toward Israel, and both Israel and the Anglo-American coalition in the Red Sea pressed on with their respective bombing campaigns against the group. While recently announcing a cessation of attacks on non-Israeli shipping in the Red Sea in light of the Gaza ceasefire, the Houthis have vowed to persist in targeting Israeli ships until all potential phases of the ceasefire are completed. In the background, Iran keeps inching closer to a nuclear weapon. In East Asia, China is flexing its muscles and bullying its neighbors, while North Korea continues its saber-rattling toward its southern neighbor.
At the center of these seemingly disparate crises and conflicts is a single, malicious force in world affairs: a new triple entente consisting of the People’s Republic of China, Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperial Russia, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The entente’s junior partners include North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. The members of this entente have alternatively been labeled the “Axis of Aggressors,” “Axis of Upheaval,” and “Axis of Ill Will,” among other titles. These powers are united by their shared geography on the Eurasian landmass, autocratic forms of government, and basic antipathy towards the American-led world order.
Over the last several years, the Eurasian entente has been pushing and probing the global American defense perimeter, sometimes in Eastern Europe, sometimes in the Middle East, sometimes in East Asia, hoping to discover the content and geographical limits of America’s red lines. They have constructed a bevy of military, diplomatic, and economic ties. Russian weapons flood the Middle East from Iran to Lebanon to Yemen. Beijing builds ties with the Houthis while offering an economic lifeline to both Moscow and Tehran.
How Trump grapples with this Eurasian entente will define his presidency. During the Biden administration, the U.S. posture was fundamentally defensive. It provided the Ukrainians with the weapons needed to repel the Russian invasion, but nothing, until recently, for offensive action against Russia. It sent Israel weapons to fight against Iran’s proxies and coordinated its defense against Iranian missile salvoes but discouraged Israel from offensive action against either Iran or its proxies on multiple occasions. It protected ships in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks and struck Houthi targets but failed to defeat the group. Now, Trump and his team must decide whether they will adhere to Biden’s policies or adopt a more proactive approach going forward.
Officials and analysts have mulled several different overarching strategies for cracking, if not rolling back, the Eurasian entente. One of the most common is the so-called “reverse-Kissinger.” Under this strategy, American policymakers would work to ply the weaker Eurasian power, Russia, away from the stronger one, China. In doing so, they would repeat President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s success in wooing Mao’s China from the Soviet Union. Another strategy would be driving a wedge between Russia and Iran. The Obama administration attempted this approach, and the first Trump administration considered it as well.
We would suggest, however, a third approach. Rather than seeking to split apart either the Sino-Russian or Russo-Iranian joints in the Eurasian bloc via diplomatic carrots and sticks, Washington should be more ambitious and aim to eject Iran, the weakest link, from the entente. The goal would be to compel the Iranian regime to stop working alongside China and Russia in assailing American allies and undermining the American-led world system. While this campaign would stop short of enacting regime change in Iran, its success would represent a fundamental shift in regime behavior. The means to achieve this would be a multi-pronged offensive along military, diplomatic, economic, and ideological dimensions.
This grand strategic approach is informed by the history of the United States and other liberal powers’ efforts to oppose the aggressive, autocratic blocs of the past. During World War I, the Allied powers (France, Britain, Russia, and eventually the United States) battled the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Twenty years later, during World War II, the Allies, now led by the United States, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union, faced the even more formidable Axis of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Early in both conflicts, the Allies committed significant resources to detach the weakest and geographically southernmost member of the enemy bloc from its two senior allies.
During World War I, Britain and France made an early effort against the weakest member of the Central Powers, the Ottoman Empire, via the infamous Gallipoli Campaign. The brainchild of then-First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the campaign aimed to occupy the Turkish Straits and Constantinople, open up the sea routes between Western Europe and Russia, sever Turkey from its Middle Eastern possessions, and ultimately eject the Ottomans from the German-led coalition. It failed disastrously, resulting in over 200,000 Anglo-French casualties. Nevertheless, later Anglo-French thrusts against the Ottomans in modern Israel and Jordan in 1917 were far more successful and badly damaged the Central Powers long before Berlin and Vienna accepted defeat a year later.
In World War II, the Allies once again adopted a southern strategy with an early campaign against the weakest member of the enemy coalition. In July 1943, after expelling Italian and German forces from North Africa, the United States and Britain invaded the Italian island of Sicily, defeating the Italian and German forces stationed there in just over a month. During this time, King Victor Emmanuel III and other Italian politicians overthrew the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. In September, Anglo-American forces landed on mainland Italy. Five days later, the Allies and Italy announced they had reached an armistice. For the remaining two years of the war, Italian forces participated on both sides of the conflict, with anti-fascist Italians fighting alongside the British and Americans and fascist Italians under Mussolini fighting alongside the Germans. When Nazi Germany collapsed in the spring of 1945, the Italian fascists disintegrated as well.
In the present day, the weakest link of the autocratic entente challenging the United States is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its gross domestic product (GDP) pales in comparison to those of China and Russia, and it is far less integrated into the global economy than China. Unlike its senior partners, it lacks a nuclear arsenal—at least for now—and its conventional forces are also weaker than those of Moscow and Beijing. It is geographically exposed across the narrow Persian Gulf to targeting from the many American assets spread across the eastern littoral of the Arabian Peninsula. The country is trapped in a worsening economic and energy crisis, and the rial is at an all-time low against the dollar.
Domestically, the Islamic regime is deeply unpopular due to its oversight of economic malaise, regional adventurism, and crackdown on domestic opposition. Israel eliminated a sizable chunk of Iran’s air defenses during its April and October strikes. Tehran’s Middle Eastern proxy network has been mauled, if not obliterated, following the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. The pieces are in place to deal a decisive blow against Tehran and, by extension, its Russian and Chinese compatriots.
Building off the Trump administration’s early initiatives vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies, a multi-pronged approach for removing Iran from the Eurasian entente is needed. These measures would go beyond Trump’s emerging campaign against Iran—which appears to be narrowly focused on its quest for a nuclear weapon—and represent a broader strategic initiative.
First, the Trump administration should aggressively execute Trump’s new executive order, returning to a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, most notably against its lucrative hydrocarbons sector. First and foremost, this will involve enforcing existing oil sanctions that the Biden administration failed to enforce sufficiently, allowing Iranian oil exports to balloon. Beyond that, new sanctions must be on the table, including secondary sanctions against Chinese entities involved in the massive oil trade between China and Iran. The Treasury Department is already moving in this direction.
New sanctions should be coupled with a return to the policy of the first Trump administration of explicitly threatening China should it continue purchasing massive quantities of Iranian oil, a policy that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz previously held up as a model. Severing Iran from its Chinese buyer will not only cripple the Iranian economy but also hurt Beijing and hopefully compel it toward other oil producers.
Second, depending on what happens in Gaza, Washington should consider intensifying its campaign against the most unpredictable member of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” the Yemeni Houthis. For the last year, the United States and its British and Israeli allies have conducted strikes against Houthi military, economic, and infrastructure targets. Still, the Houthis have yet to alter their behavior.
If the Houthis rekindle their campaign, in addition to restarting the Biden-era effort, Trump and his team should consider corralling Riyadh into playing a greater role in the anti-Houthi campaign, given Saudi Arabia’s geographic proximity to Yemen and experience in fighting the Houthis. Washington should launch an interagency investigation into Beijing and Moscow’s ties to the Houthis, including intelligence sharing and weapons sales, and make its findings public.
Third, Washington must vigorously enforce the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and prevent Hezbollah, once Iran’s chief proxy, from reconstituting itself. As chair of the oversight committee monitoring the ceasefire, the United States must closely scrutinize violations of the ceasefire, which began almost immediately after it went into effect. Trump and his team must also uphold the side letter reportedly provided to Israel at the time of the ceasefire. In this, Washington pledged to share intelligence on Hezbollah’s activities with Jerusalem, give Israel latitude to eliminate threats emanating from Lebanon, and work with Israel to thwart Iranian efforts to smuggle new weapons to Hezbollah.
Washington must also carefully monitor any Russian endeavors to build its ties with Hezbollah after masses of Russian weapons were found in Hezbollah’s arsenals in the recent conflict. Overall, Trump should rethink whether the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) can offer a serious counterweight against Hezbollah and Iran. Although the new Lebanese president, former LAF Army Chief Joseph Aoun, has implied a willingness to take on Hezbollah and ensure that the Lebanese state has a monopoly on force within its borders, it is too early to celebrate his ascent.
Fourth, Washington should spearhead an international ideological offensive against the Islamic Republic that couples denunciation of Iranian radicalism and imperialism, vocal support for Iranian dissidents and the Iranian people, and a bludgeoning of Iran at the United Nations. Like with maximum pressure, the blueprint already exists from Trump’s first term. Taking inspiration from Ronald Reagan’s Westminster and “Evil Empire” speeches, Trump should, within his first 100 days, deliver a major speech on Iran combining castigation of Iran’s regional imperialism and nuclear ambitions. Moreover, he should lionize American and Israeli efforts to degrade Tehran’s influence in recent years and clearly articulate U.S. objectives going forward.
Trump and his administration should also actively champion and assist the brave Iranian opposition, including through rhetorical support and by building on existing American efforts to increase the information available to the Iranian people.
Finally, Washington should put Tehran—and its patrons in Beijing and Moscow—on the defensive at the UN and its affiliated institutions. With both China and Russia wielding vetoes at the UN Security Council, more forward-leaning measures against Tehran are likely to fail. Still, even attempts at new anti-Iran resolutions would put the members of the entente on the back foot, forcing them to try to justify Iran’s regional adventurism, nuclear subterfuge, and domestic repression.
Lastly, Washington must gear up to deal with the Iranian nuclear program. Tehran has recently increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is near weapons grade, such that it now has enough for four bombs. According to Israeli and American officials, Iran has also undertaken computer modeling and explosives research that could be related to nuclear weaponization.
As Iran inches closer to the bomb, the United States and its Israeli ally must ready themselves to use military force should the Iranians seek to sprint to a bomb. To prepare for this possibility, Washington should begin by providing Israel with the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), as scholars like Dennis Ross and members of Congress have previously suggested.
Israel’s impressive track record as one of the few countries to have successfully attacked and dismantled nuclear facilities in the past—those of Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007—suggests that in the right hands, the MOP could be the difference between a nuclear and a non-nuclear Tehran. Beyond that, the United States and Israel should develop joint plans for a potential campaign against Iran’s nuclear sites and continue combined military exercises like Juniper Oak.
Trump and his team should explore coaxing European allies such as Britain and France and Sunni Arab allies such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) into joining at least the military exercises to supply the exercises with a greater degree of international legitimacy and create muscle memory between the United States, Israel, and these allies in the eventuality of strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
These are the main lines of effort that can collectively dislodge Iran from the Eurasian Entente. They can be coupled with a myriad of other policies, from American arms sales to Israel to American sponsorship of Israeli-Arab air defense coordination to continued U.S.-Israeli cyber cooperation against Iran, that are at this point de rigueur. After Israel’s historic battlefield successes against Iran and its proxies, now is the time for the United States to capitalize on the strategic momentum generated by Israel’s victories and push Iran out of its alignment with China and Russia.
A successful campaign would not only restructure Middle Eastern geopolitics and enhance America’s regional position but also indirectly weaken China and Russia by depriving them of their chief Middle Eastern partner. The potential for a strategic revolution akin to those of 1917 and 1943 beckons. It is time for Washington to seize it.
William Erich Ellison is a second-year PhD student at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His research interests include the U.S.-Israel relationship, the transatlantic relationship, and Israel’s relationships with major powers in a multipolar world. You can follow him on X at @Will51796.
Micah Pickus holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a focus on International Security and Economic Policy. In May 2024, he completed a nine-month Boren Fellowship for intensive Russian-language study in Almaty, Kazakhstan. His research interests include arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, Russian and Central Asian politics, and Russian grand strategy in the Middle East. You can follow him on X: @PickusMicah.
Image: Ian Cramman / Shutterstock.com.