Sino File | US-Iran crisis: a Middle East war risks drawing in China and Russia, too

America’s assassination of Iran’s second-most powerful commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani, has sparked fears of a war in the Middle East.

But it is not just the United States that risks getting drawn into a conflict, given the emerging Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis.

Days before the US strike on January 3 – which also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah militia group – China and Russia completed unprecedented joint military drills with Iran. Further evidence of growing ties can be seen in the four visits that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made to Beijing over the past year.

The Middle East was already a powder keg – with conflicts in Syria, Libya and Yemen, unrest in Iraq and Lebanon, as well as conflict between Israel and the Palestinians – but America’s most recent move has the potential to be more provocative and consequential for regional security than either the 2011 killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden or last year’s assassination of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Just look at the anti-US fervour on show at the events held in Iran and across the region to mourn Soleimani for evidence of that fact.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to take revenge against the “criminals” who killed Soleimani, prompting US President Donald Trump to respond with a threat of his own: that “52 Iranian sites” would be “hit very fast and hard” if Tehran acts.

Tensions between Iran and the US have been ratcheting up ever since 2018, when Trump withdrew from a 2015 nuclear pact that had been agreed upon by Iran and five other nations, including China and Russia. The US president said he made the decision because Iran continued to build intermediate- and short-range missiles and drones.