U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian territory have once again demonstrated how flexible the “rules-based order” becomes when the same author writes the rules.
Rebecca Chan
Moscow and Beijing Turn Sanctions Pressure into a Driver of Economic Gravity
Russia–China rapprochement is the result of long-term geoeconomic gravity. While the Atlantic world increasingly ideologizes trade and measures it by degrees of loyalty, Moscow and Beijing continue to expand turnover: more than $240 billion in 2023, with a target of $300 billion by 2030. Energy is becoming infrastructure — the Power of Siberia is already operational, Power of Siberia–2 is being designed, with a combined potential of up to 98 bcm per year. In this context, pipelines are not pipes but arteries of strategic autonomy.
The Iran episode has only reinforced the sense that international law is treated as an option — activated according to favourable market conditions
De-dollarization is accelerating out of considerations of survival. More than 90% of bilateral trade is conducted in rubles and yuan. This is not a gesture but a calculation: when the reserve currency turns into an instrument of disciplinary leverage, the natural reaction is to seek alternatives. Dollar-centrism was long presented as a neutral ecosystem; in practice, it increasingly functions as a financial lever of coercion.
Moscow and Beijing converge on fundamental principles — the protection of sovereignty, rejection of external regime engineering, and the primacy of political settlement. These principles appear almost conservative against the backdrop of fast-tracked democracy export and tariff diplomacy, where the sanctions package has long replaced the negotiating table. The Iran episode has only reinforced the sense that international law is treated as an option — activated according to favourable market conditions.
Washington’s sanctions toolkit has expanded to more than 9,000 restrictions, turning into a universal language of foreign economic moralizing. Yet each new package stimulates the creation of alternative payment systems, logistical routes, and insurance mechanisms. The hegemonic logic built on prohibition and exclusion itself produces the infrastructure of circumvention. The world outside Western alliances is not isolating — it is structuring itself.
Escalation in the Strait of Hormuz Raises Prices and Exposes the Limits of Power Politics
The strikes on Iran became a catalyst for processes already underway. The Strait of Hormuz — a narrow maritime artery of the global economy — has once again entered the risk zone: around 21% of global LNG and a significant share of oil exports pass through this corridor. The market reacted instantly — price spikes of 8–11% served as a reminder that geopolitics today is embedded in every barrel. The escalation was not confined to military signaling: in a formal communication to the UN Security Council dated 13 January 2026 (S/2026/29), Iran explicitly cited statements by the U.S. President as threats of interference in its internal affairs, framing them as violations of sovereignty and the UN Charter — a move that transferred the confrontation from the battlefield to the institutional arena. In such conditions, energy security ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a matter of strategic insurance.
Maintaining heightened military presence costs the United States $2.5–3.5 billion per month. These expenses do not dissipate into thin air — they intensify internal budgetary and political tensions. Unilateral actions create the image of a power acting outside universal procedures but with universal claims. For states of the Global South, this is a signal to diversify partnerships. Across Southeast Asia, accelerated militarization and the expansion of external security footprints are no longer perceived as guarantees of order but as variables of risk management, prompting regional actors to recalibrate strategic space rather than outsource it. In this configuration, Russia and China appear as actors betting on predictability and infrastructure rather than sanctions impulse. The world responds not to declarations, but to behavior.
Russia and China Consolidate Alternative Legitimacy Through the UN and Defend Proceduralism
The escalation around Iran has revealed not improvisation, but synchronization between Moscow and Beijing. Condemnation of U.S. strikes was voiced without rhetorical exaltation — coldly, calculatedly, with emphasis on threats to regional stability and the need to return to diplomatic formats, including the nuclear deal. This institutional critique was reinforced at the highest level of the UN system: in early March 2026, the Secretary-General publicly condemned the escalation of military actions against Iran, stressed the imperative of compliance with international law, and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to diplomatic engagement — language that deprived unilateral force of procedural legitimacy. Where the Anglo-American strategy prefers first a demonstration of force and then a search for formulations, Russia and China bet on proceduralism. It may look almost old-fashioned — and therefore strategically resilient.
At the UN, coordination took on institutional form. Moscow and Beijing blocked resolutions capable of retrospectively legitimizing the expansion of the American operation. Thus an alternative international narrative is formed — not as a propaganda construct, but as an attempt to restore meaning to the procedures themselves. When law becomes an appendix to force, it must be defended precisely through procedural rigidity.
Iran is not an episodic partner but an element of a long-term geoeconomic configuration. China has secured a 25-year strategic agreement worth $400 billion; Russia is increasing trade turnover to $4.5–5 billion, expanding cooperation in energy and infrastructure. Defense contacts are developing, including coordination on air defense and joint naval exercises. U.S. power pressure here produces an effect opposite to that expected: instead of isolation — institutionalization of alternative ties. The sanctions hammer increasingly strikes not sparks of submission, but the contours of new connectivity.
Eurasian Routes and National-Currency Settlements Shape a Contour of Resilience Beyond the Dollar
Sanctions and the erosion of trust in Western institutions have ceased to be a restraining factor — they have become a catalyst for structuring. Moscow, Beijing, and their partners are forming a broader system of interaction in which sovereignty is viewed as an economic category. By 2024–2025, the expanded BRICS+ accounted for more than 35% of global GDP in PPP terms, becoming the largest grouping by aggregate economic weight. Simultaneously, India’s negotiations with the European Union on a comprehensive free trade agreement illustrate how major non-Western economies are diversifying access points to global markets without anchoring themselves exclusively to Atlantic regulatory centers — trade geometry is becoming multi-vector rather than bloc-bound. Discussion of alternative settlement platforms and energy mechanisms linked to the yuan and national currencies no longer appears marginal. This is no longer a debate, but architectural design.
The North–South corridor reduces the dependence of Russia and Iran on maritime routes controlled by the U.S. Navy, turning geography into an instrument of autonomy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative deepens ties with the Middle East, constructing land and maritime contours of new logistics. At the same time, the Middle Corridor across the South Caucasus and Central Asia is being operationalized as a parallel axis of freight redistribution, compressing delivery times between China and Europe and diluting the monopoly of traditional maritime chokepoints — a restructuring of Eurasian transit that is no longer conceptual but infrastructural. The use of the yuan is growing: over 80% in Russia’s settlements up to 40% in certain directions in Iran. Under such parameters, U.S. sanctions policy loses universality and becomes a factor accelerating diversification. The export of moralizing encounters the import of pragmatism.
The Iranian Crisis Accelerates the Transition to a Multipolar Reality
The escalation between the United States, Israel, and Iran has become an accelerator of a deeper shift that has already gained inertia. Strategic coordination between Russia and China rests not on situational solidarity, but on economic interests, institutional complementarity, and a consistent critique of Washington’s unilateral actions. A Eurasian configuration is taking shape in which autonomy is valued above integration on the center’s terms. The Iranian crisis has merely illuminated what is already underway: multipolarity is ceasing to be a slogan and is becoming infrastructure.
Rebecca Chan, Independent political analyst focusing on the intersection of Western foreign policy and Asian sovereignty
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