They aren’t meant to deter the US and Israel like some Alt-Media observers believe.
Iran, Russia, and China are carrying out the latest round of their annual joint naval drills in the Strait of Hormuz right as Trump is reportedly considering whether to authorize large-scale military strikes against the Islamic Republic amidst the US’ largest regional military buildup since the 2003 Iraq War. The timing made some observers in the Alt-Media Community speculate that Russia and China dispatched some of their warships to Iran under the cover of their annual drills in an attempt to deter the US and Israel.
For as much as some might want this to be true, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied it and said that “These are planned exercises, and they were agreed upon in advance.” This doesn’t mean that they aren’t helping Iran in other ways since reports have circulated on social media alleging that their military aircraft have paid quite a few visits there in recent weeks. Nevertheless, indirectly helping Iran ahead of a potential conflict isn’t the same as directly participating in it, which neither of them will do.
Regardless of whatever some Alt-Media observers might believe to be Russia’s and China’s interests vis-à-vis Iran, the precedent of last summer’s 12-Day War when Iran was turned into a nationwide bombing range for the Israeli Air Force proved that they won’t risk World War III for its sake. Russia also didn’t militarily intervene to help the Iranian-led “Resistance Axis”, especially its Hezbollah centerpiece, either. None of this should come as a surprise considering how risk-averse Putin has proven himself to be.
After all, he only authorized two outmatched retaliatory escalations with the Oreshniks in response to many times more Western-backed Ukrainian provocations that include the spring 2024’s Crocus terrorist attack and even trying to kill him last December, that’s how worried he is about risking World War III. It was therefore never conceivable that he’d throw four years of caution during the special operation to the wind to risk World War III for any other country’s sake if he won’t even do it for his own.
That’s not a criticism of Putin, it’s only an attempt to draw attention to how he’s neither the monster, madman, nor mastermind that his foes and friends respectively perceive him as being. Putin is the consummate pragmatist, and that’s why he’ll never risk World War III for any other country’s sake and will only do it for Russia’s sake if he truly feels that he has no choice. Even in the worst-case scenario of Iran’s defeat and subsequent “Balkanization”, Russia will still survive, and he knows this.
That’s not to say that its interests wouldn’t be harmed since Russia relies on Iran as the irreplaceable transit state along its North-South Transport Corridor with India for conducting trade between them, but just that the consequences would be manageable, including the security ones. It’s the same for China, which has no foreign military experience since its brief 1979 war with Vietnam that most observers consider it to have lost, and it too won’t even risk World War III over Taiwan (at least not yet).
The takeaway from the latest Iranian-Russian-Chinese naval drills is therefore that they’re simply a symbolic exercise, not evidence of strategic coordination between these three Great Powers aimed at jointly deterring the US and Israel, against whom neither Russia nor China wants to wage war. Once again, those two can and maybe already are indirectly helping Iran with defense equipment and/or intelligence, but they’re not going to fight the US and Israel in its support if war soon breaks out again.
Source: author’s blog
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