The News
Iran, China, and Russia began annual “Security Belt” military exercises in the Gulf of Oman Monday, underscoring the three nations’ security cooperation amid a shifting US foreign policy position under President Donald Trump.
Since taking office in January, Trump has renewed his first term’s posture of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, imposed hiked import duties on China, and made overtures toward Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump pushes to end the Ukraine war.
Trump’s thawing of US-Russia ties is, some analysts have argued, a potential attempt at a so-called “reverse Nixon,” aimed at pushing Beijing and Moscow apart. Still, it remains “highly unlikely that Russia has any desire to separate itself from China,” a Brookings Institution analyst said, although Moscow “likes to have options.”
Despite “all the real limits to their partnership,” the Council on Foreign Relations wrote, Moscow and Beijing remain united by “opposition to a US-led world that, they believe, affords them too little security, status, and freedom of action.”