As Iran’s crisis deepens, another question is quietly emerging in Washington: are Tehran’s key partners starting to step back? We asked our great-power competition experts Min Mitchell, who tracks China, and Andres Ilves, a veteran Iran and Russia watcher, to assess whether Moscow and Beijing are recalibrating their support — and what a weaker Iran means for both.
Question: Mass demonstrations started in Iran on December 28. They’ve been the largest anti-regime protests since the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Protests keep spreading, demographically and geographically. How stable is the regime?
Andres: The current round of protests was started by shopkeepers in Tehran, who started to strike, furious at the plunge of the rial and soaring prices.
There’s accumulated social and economic exhaustion. Rising inflation, currency collapse, and chronic unemployment have eroded living standards. Memory of the Mahsa Amini uprising keeps questions of human rights and everyday humiliation alive, especially among women.
Protests have been spreading from bazaars to university campuses and provincial towns. The participation of workers, pensioners, and ethnic minorities makes them harder to isolate. Yet the regime still retains crucial levers of control.
The regime mixes repression with tactical concessions such as limited subsidies or reshuffling midlevel officials. This approach can thin crowds without resolving the underlying crisis.
Question: Iran faces an internal and external challenge. How does the threat of foreign intervention from Israel and the U.S. play with different groups inside the country?
Andres: Foreign intervention cuts across Iran’s political and social map in complicated ways. Some protesters blame Israel and the United States for sanctions and military strikes. Yet most hold the Islamic Republic responsible for the crisis.
In ethnic minority regions, Kurds, Baluchis, and Arabs, who have faced decades of discrimination, may welcome international attention and intervention. Yet these groups fear being exposed amidst political change to state repression and local score settling.
Iran’s leadership tries to fuse various strands into a single party line: that unrest is manipulated from abroad and that any weakening of the state will more foreign intervention. The persistence of protests suggests many now see external threats as background noise compared with daily economic hardship and political suffocation.
Question: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly has an “escape plan” that involves fleeing to Russia if current nationwide intensify, according to The Times of London. Is there evidence the Russians are actually close to abandoning the Iranian regime?
Andres: Such reports are congruent with a broader narrative of elite panic, but evidence remains thin. What is clear is that Moscow and Tehran have deepened cooperation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Iran supplying drones and munitions and Russia expanding economic and military ties. This has created mutual dependence.
For the Kremlin, however, Iran is a useful partner that helps blunt Western influence but not an ally worth risking direct confrontation with the United States.
Question: U.S. forces raided a cargo ship traveling with weapons from China to Iran last month. Two weeks ago, Iran criticized China publicly for Beijing’s backing of the UAE over three strategically located islands in the Persian Gulf. How do you assess the current state of relations between Beijing and Tehran?
Min: The last thirty days have delivered a brutal reality check to the “comprehensive strategic partnership” between Beijing and Tehran. The current dynamic between Beijing and Tehran is a rather fragile, highly asymmetrical partnership of necessity that is undergoing a significant stress test.
These two events highlight that Iran is locked into a dependency where it must rely on China for economic survival (oil sales) and military technology, even as China demonstrates it will not offer security guarantees. Beijing effectively balances the region by keeping Iran as a useful anti-American hedge while conducting its serious, high-value business with the stable Arab monarchies.
Expect relations in 2026 to remain transactional and tense. The relationship is durable not because of trust, but because Iran has nowhere else to go.
Question: Both Moscow and Beijing have maintained ties with Tehran as a bulwark against American and Western influence and power projection in the region. A recent policy memo by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argued that both Russia and China have been dialing back support for Iran since last summer’s 12-day war with Israel. Do current protests push ties to a tipping point?
A & M: The “dial-back” is real but it’s less a breakup than a recalibration of risk due to Iran’s weakness.
The deeper reality is that neither Moscow nor Beijing has ever sought a full-blown alliance with Tehran. Russia values Iran as a partner of convenience, useful for defense cooperation, sanctions evasion, and diplomatic leverage. China treats Iran as an energy and geoeconomic file. There’s discounted oil, connectivity corridors, and leverage over a sanctioned state, all carefully balanced against its far more consequential ties with Gulf Arab states and global markets.
Seen this way, the post-war ‘dial-back’ is better understood as risk management. Both capitals appear comfortable with a weaker, constrained Iran that remains dependent on them, rather than a more assertive Iran that could drag them into confrontation with Israel or the United States.
Do the current protests push the relationship toward a tipping point? Not yet. But they add a layer of existential risk that makes both Moscow and Beijing nervous.
Question: There’s a great deal of interest in Washington in the shape of a post-Mullah Iran. To what extent do Russia and China believe they can influence events in Iran in the case of regime collapse?
A & M: In Moscow and Beijing, talk about a post-Islamic Republic remains cautious, but planners cannot ignore the possibility of abrupt change. Both powers have invested in state to state relations. At the same time, neither wants to be locked into a single political outcome.
Russian strategists view Iran primarily through the lens of regional balance and confrontation with the West. China’s priority is uninterrupted energy flows and protection of its nationals and investments.
Both powers understand that overt interference could provoke nationalist backlash in Iran. Their preferred method is quiet engagement with whoever emerges on top, combined with diplomatic language about noninterference and regional dialogue.
Question: It’s a particularly fluid and volatile moment, including in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. Are Moscow and Beijing clear on strategic objectives and priorities for the region beyond Iran?
A & M: Russia and China share a broad interest in limiting U.S. dominance in the Middle East, yet their visions differ in scope and method. For Russia, the region remains a theater where limited military assets and diplomatic activism can deliver outsized influence.
China’s approach is more economic. It wants secure sea lanes, diversified energy supplies, and access to markets across the Gulf, Levant, and North Africa. Beijing presents itself as a neutral broker.
In Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, both Russia and China criticize Israeli and U.S. actions but stop short of material support that would entangle them directly. Iran figures in these calculations as a necessary but difficult partner whose confrontations can destabilize markets and trigger clashes that neither Moscow nor Beijing wants to manage.
The current Iranian protests fit uneasily into their plans. Prolonged unrest threatens to disrupt energy flows and complicate diplomacy over Gaza and Syria, yet also weakens a state that Washington still views as an adversary. For now, both powers prioritize flexibility over grand designs, adapting their ambitions to a crowded and volatile landscape.
