Iran does not stand alone – China and Russia create restraint

China, and Russia do not stand aside; they hold the war in deliberate abeyance add solidarity and deterrence. What appears as support is, more precisely, structured pre-emption against reckless US escalation. The United States is compelled to calculate against a dispersed but formidable alignment of power. The ongoing war is not sustained war, but a multipolar, multi-cornered balance that restrains dominance. This is no longer a theatre of dominance, but a multipolar, multi-cornered contest of endurance. The most consequential actors in the Iran conflict are not only those deploying force on the battlefield, but those who have embedded themselves within the conflict’s underlying architecture. Russia and China have not declared war, yet to characterise them as peripheral or neutral is […]