Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's funeral last week was a Who’s Who of the Islamic State’s proxies. Among those paying their final respects were representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Houthi movement and Iraqi Shia militant groups. War criminal heads of state, however, took a hard pass on making the overseas journey as neither Vladimir Putin nor Bashar al-Assad were in attendance. But IRGC Chief Commander Hossein Salami and Quds Force Chief Esmaeil Qa’ani put in some face time, Negar Mojtahedi reports.
The world is ablaze, with abundant evidence of accelerant all over the hands of the mullahs in Iran, which spends about $1 billion on its proxies. In Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan and the Ukraine, the Islamic Republic is supplying arms to proxies and/or drones, at which they are getting quite good at manufacturing. Contrary to the intentions of the West, sanctions led Iran to discover the hidden value in the destructive capabilities of drones. Sanctions drove Iran to drones as a source of revenue and, over time, in the expertise at crafting of drones for war. Drone exports are now a very lucrative part of the Iranian economy, wholly immune to Western sanctions. “While it is difficult to determine the precise revenue Iran has received from military drone exports, the estimated value of the global market in 2022 was US$12.55 billion, a figure expected to reach $14.14 billion in 2023 and $35.60 billion in 2030,” Eric Lob writes.
Further, Lob writes in The Conversation of another little mentioned front in the seemingly never-ending string of Iranian proxy wars — Sudan. “Between December 2023 and January 2024, Tehran supplied several Mohajer-6 midrange reconnaissance and combat drones to President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF,” Lob writes. “In February, the drones helped the SAF take territory from Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemedti,’ and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, during an offensive in the city of Omdurman.” Sudan is what can only be properly construed as a long-shot investment for Iran as, according to the UNDP, more than 90% of Sudan's population identifies as Sunni. But, you never know. Russia is attempting ecclesiastical expansion into Africa. More than 200 African priests have joined the Russian Orthodox Church. So, hey.
But back to Iran. Shiite Iran is involved in — believe it or not — Ethiopia. In 2021, Iran sent armed Mohajer-6 drones to Ethiopia in violation of a standing UN Security Council Resolution. Also, violating UN Security Council Resolutions is icing on the cake, a further signal of strength, of testosteronal alpha, of the weakness of the Western based world order. Africa, for want of a better word, appears to be the new black when it comes to non-state actors, like the Wagner Group.
All of this is in addition to the four Middle East wars in which Iran has already involved itself. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Face the Nation laid it out:
There are in fact, four wars going on in the Middle East right now. Not only the war in Gaza, but the war on Israel's northern border with Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and the disruption of the global supply chains through their attacks in the Red Sea, and then the militias in- in Syria and in Iraq. There is one power behind all four of these conflicts and that's Iran. And what we're not talking about, we become so preoccupied with Gaza, what we've failed to talk sufficiently about is how do we deal with an Iran that is basically the- the one providing the arms, the planning and the intelligence in all four of these conflicts, and that Iran is the source of the problem.
Yes, clearly. But how have Western “solutions” to the Iranian problem thus fared? Have sanctions worked on the Islamic nation of 88 million, where the neoconservatives used to incessantly remind us that the majority of the country’s population is under 30 years of age? “After six years of U.S. ‘maximum pressure,’ Iran’s economy continues to defy dire predictions of economic collapse that motivated Trump’s hasty 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (also known as the JCPOA),” writes Djavad Salehi-Ifahani for Responsible Statecraft. “The Biden administration’s continuation of the same policy since 2021 is similarly based on the logic that the weaker Iran’s economy is, the more likely Tehran will bend to Washington’s will.” Salehi-Ifahani further notes that GDP in the first nine months of the Iranian fiscal year (March 21 to December 20, 2023) “grew by a 6.7% annual rate, and it is very likely to finish the year in two months with a growth rate exceeding the World Bank and IMF forecasts of about 4%.” Charmed, I’m sure.
Which reminds me of the situation in Russia, a stalwart Iranian ally, btw, that has also fallen afoul of the United States-dominated world order. US sanctions have likewise failed to tame Putin’s wild, lawless beast. Ana Swanson in the Times wrote in February of the limits of US sanctions as evidenced against Russia:
Finally, the newest sanctions — the ones that try to constrain Russia’s access to technology and its oil sales — have not been as effective. The U.S. wields much less influence over these sectors than it does over the banking sector, which is tethered to the dollar. The new measures, imposed in 2022, made it harder and more expensive for Russia to do business abroad. But they haven’t wounded its economy enough to make most Russians question the war. “The mood in Russia is, the whole world is against us, but we are managing quite well,” said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Putin enjoys giving smug press conferences chiding America on its declining influence. Or, how does one cite the Thucydidean Trap without citing the Thucydidean Trap? And President Xi of China, Putin’s ally and “unlimited partner,” though less vocal about thwarting the United States, seems pleased with what the two countries are together accomplishing. Are we indeed witnessing the limits of US sanctions? Russia, along with its allies China and, to a lesser degree, Iran are all ramping up their economic and military cooperation in order to thwart American dominance.
But behind this curtain of Iranian anti-Western intransigence and Russian aggression is the real Wizard of our present geopolitics. Not of Oz, however, but of Beijing. Both Iran and Putin are useful geopolitical adversaries of the United States from the point of view of Xi. They, in fine, distract America in far flung parts of the globe, extending — or, some might say, overextending — our military reach away from the South China Sea and from Taiwan. David Sanger of the New York Times, in an interesting conversation with Ian Bremer laid out why Xi holds Iran and Putin so close, strategically:
"Sanger: ...(Putin) does not have a choice, except to deal with the Chinese on Chinese terms right now. And Xi Xinping knows it, but it is useful to Xi because, look .... hat was (Xi)s biggest concern 3 years ago when Biden comes in? ... That the US would finally get serious about moving everything to the Indo-Pacific and confronting him over the South China Sea and defending Taiwan and so forth. So if you're Xi, the two best things that could happen to you is that the US is tied up with Ukraine or ripping itself up about the aid and consumed again in the Middle East. That's what they need.
And what a splendid distraction! Whatever happened to the “Asia Pivot”? It was all the rage in the Obama administration. In 2011, Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s Secretary of State, framed the TPP as the centerpiece of the United States’ Asia pivot. Who among us talks of the TPP now? “Although Clinton had traveled the world in support of TPP as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, she told the ‘PBS Newshour’ that the final agreement didn’t meet the ‘high bar’ she set for the pact,” wrote Doug Palmer for Politico. Clinton switched her position in 2015, when it became evident that the TPP would be seen as a manufacturing jobs killer in the rust belt that she needed to win the Presidency. Whatever the merits or demerits of the TPP as a manufacturing job-killer, this was a decided win for Xi.
There are more incendiary distractions as well on the horizon, unfortunately. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Cyber-Electronic Command, for instance, has already been sanctioned by the Treasury Department for targeting US water infrastructure. Russian hacktivists did the same to a small town in Texas only a month ago, although there was little media coverage. And as we approach the 2024 elections, there will be more and more menacing distractions of the same sort. Probably of the cyber variety, involving disinformation, deepfakes and hacks, probably to US infrastructure. In the short term, Russia and Iran benefit from these distractions that magnify the deep divisions in America, raising anxiety, causing general instability. Incidentally, these things tend to hurt the incumbent President — the Democrat.
Iran gains a little; Russia a littler bit more. But no one gains as much as Xi Xinping and ever-rising China in the long game, as America splinters, divides or quite possibly even ceases to exist as a democracy — or, as the beacon of democracies — altogether. Even in the short game, America’s distractions — in the Middle East and in the Ukraine — keep it from meddling in Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Trump also benefits somewhat from this, even as he appears to be tough on China trade. Yes, Trump is at present a great enemy — at least rhetorically — of China. It was probably quite jarring in Beijing, at least initially, to deal with Trump’s mercurial nature, which is probably the result of acute mental decline, Diet Coke and Adderall. But the leadership in Beijing have ultimately figured out how to deal with his low attention span and over-caffeinated truculence, by giving him big photo-op trade deals that eventually come to naught. After all, Trump is only in it really for the food, the photo ops and, as always, the cold hard cash.
Also — Trump, out of pique, tends to administratively erase the accomplishments of his Democratic predecessors, which dramatically weakens the integrity of the promises of the United States in the eyes of world leaders. Not that Trump cares about statecraft, but his desire to negate the accomplishments of his predecessors erodes trust in America. If Trump gets re-elected, expect him to do to Biden’s signature achievements what he did to Obama’s. Trump erased Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria, the Paris Climate Accord, diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Iran nuclear deal largely because he detested his predecessor. How does that make America appear on the global stage as a reliable partner? Why risk anything great to make a deal with a country so mercurial in aspect? Or maybe we have in this finally found the “American First” foreign policy? To explode all previous American foreign policy?
A Trump Presidency is good for Iran, great for Russia but the best of all possible worlds for Beijing, which can point to America and say “they are not reliable partners, and we are.” And, in a sense, they are right.
“China has surely been watching as Russia and Iran have used non-state actors to pursue their strategic objectives in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere. What lessons might Beijing have drawn, and how might we see them applied? The Kremlin has cultivated a range of non-state actors to do its bidding. In Ukraine, Russia unleashed the Wagner Group, a private military company that was involved in some of the war’s bloodiest battles; the group, since rebranded as Africa Corps, has also been deployed to help ‘coup-proof’ military juntas throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In the online world, the Kremlin has used troll farms such as the Internet Research Agency to sway elections and undermine foreign support for Kyiv. Tehran, meanwhile, has used its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force to develop, support, and fund a broad network of militias and political factions across the Middle East—a so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’ that includes Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. Iran supplies these proxy outfits with sophisticated weaponry and provides hands-on training in how to employ drones, missiles, and other cutting-edge technologies. In return, Hezbollah’s rocket attacks have kept the Israel Defense Forces from being able to concentrate solely on fighting in Gaza, while the Houthis’ relentless attacks on commercial shipping have slowed regional economies and threaten to cause global effects. Russia and Iran’s use of non-state actors has reduced international blowback as they pursue their geopolitical goals, but there are risks to the proxy model, too.” (Molly Saltskog and Colin P. Clarke/DefenseOne)
“Some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists will host a fundraiser for Donald Trump next month as Republicans make inroads within the overwhelmingly Democratic tech donor community. David Sacks and fellow tech investor Chamath Palihapitiya, co-hosts of the popular All-In podcast, are hosting a San Francisco fundraiser for Trump on June 6, according to an invitation obtained by the Financial Times. Sacks has said he hopes to feature the presidential candidate on his show. The event — which comes ahead of another fundraiser by Palmer Luckey, founder of defence group Anduril and Oculus VR, in Newport Beach, California — is a sign of how leaders in elite tech circles are becoming increasingly critical of President Joe Biden, with some considering switching allegiance to Trump. Tickets for the All-In fundraiser cost at least $50,000 a head, although extra VIP perks such as ‘preferred seating’ for dinner and a photo with the ex-president can be bought for a $300,000 donation.” (FT)
“Despite anticipation of a third term for Narendra Modi, the prime minister’s record on inequality has drawn strong criticism, especially as the number of billionaires soars in India. With the billionaire class expanding “at a record pace,” historic inequality between rich and poor characterizes the overall economic picture of the country, even as Modi’s government campaigns on mass reduction of poverty. Analysts have described the government’s claims as misleading, and point to a practice of cherry picking what numbers are released. Modi remains by and large the favorite to win, but the substance of his message may require a grain of salt.” (semafor election hub)