TESTIMONY: The Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis tightens — missiles, MOU and the war that won't end

Introduction: three capitals, one partnership, one common war

The axis taking shape while the West negotiates

I was not in Tehran when the Iranian, Russian, and Chinese leaders consulted on the draft trilateral memorandum of understanding. I did not hear the conversations in the corridors. What I have are the verifiable facts, the public statements, and the signals that these three governments have been sending to the world for several weeks. And these facts say something grave: in June 2026, while American and Iranian negotiators were exchanging diplomatic formulas about the nuclear program, while the G7 debated new sanctions, while Ukraine was fighting for every square meter of its territory, the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis was structuring itself with a coherence and determination that deserve to be taken seriously. Not as metaphor. Not as rhetoric. As documented geopolitical reality.

On June 13, 2026, in Tehran, representatives of Iran, Russia, and China gathered to consult on a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) in 14 points. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani publicly confirmed on X: "The strategic partnership between Iran, China, and Russia will continue with force." A few weeks later, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was publishing videos of ballistic missile launches with inscriptions directly threatening the United States. And behind the scenes, Moscow was still receiving North Korean munitions and Iranian technologies for its war in Ukraine. This triptych — diplomatic agreement, military demonstration, war support — draws an alliance that is no longer virtual.

The 14-point trilateral MOU: what the documents reveal

The Tehran meeting of June 13, 2026

The June 13, 2026 meeting in Tehran, reported by Al-Ahram, gathered representatives of the three capitals around a draft memorandum of understanding in 14 points. This document — whose precise content is not entirely public — would cover, according to available sources, economic, military, and diplomatic dimensions of trilateral cooperation. The two-stage structure planned: an initial MOU, followed by a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country was hosting parallel discussions in Islamabad, had declared that the agreement could be finalized within 24 hours — a formulation that underlined the perceived urgency and the dynamic of the negotiation.

The presence of Iran, Russia, and China in the same formalized trilateral negotiation is itself an event. These three countries have well-documented histories of bilateral cooperation and anti-Western convergences — but the formalization of a multilateral agreement represents a further step toward a structured alliance architecture. Russia and China signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2022, often described as an alliance "without limits." Adding Iran as a third formal partner would create a triangular structure covering complementary geographic and influence zones: Eastern Europe (Russia), Asia-Pacific (China), Middle East (Iran).

What the MOU means operationally

A memorandum of understanding is not a military alliance treaty — it does not automatically obligate armed intervention if one of the partners is attacked. But it creates a formal coordination framework that has real operational consequences. It facilitates intelligence exchanges. It coordinates diplomatic positions in international bodies — UN, IAEA, WTO. It structures trade flows, particularly in sectors sanctioned by the West, by creating alternative financial circuits. And in the military domain, it can justify and formalize cooperations that already exist de facto: the Iranian Shahed-136 drones used by Russia in Ukraine, the Chinese military technologies transiting toward Russia, the Iranian missiles that allow Russia to compensate for its ammunition losses.

These de facto cooperations become, with a formal MOU, more difficult to deny diplomatically and easier to deepen. The MOU also sends a political signal to third-party countries: there is an alternative to the Western order, structured and permanent, that can offer economic and security partnerships. For Global South countries seeking to diversify their alliances — India, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey — this signal is not without consequences. It creates options where there was only one. And options mean leverage in negotiations with the West.

The IRGC's missiles: a calculated show of force

Strikes on Ali Al Salem base and the Fifth Fleet

The diplomacy of the trilateral MOU unfolded in parallel with an Iranian military demonstration that cannot be ignored. According to Al Jazeera reports from June 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles toward the American Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait and toward the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. These strikes — or capability demonstrations — were part of an escalation related to frictions over the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC published videos showing missiles with messages directly targeting President Trump. This visual communication is a capability demonstration as much as a political message.

Strikes on American bases in the Gulf represent a significant line-crossing. Iran has, on several occasions since 2019, attacked American interests in the region — oil tankers, Saudi infrastructure, bases in Iraq. But direct strikes on American bases in Kuwait and Bahrain raise the level of confrontation and test the American response. In the context of negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program and the trilateral MOU, these strikes send a clear message: Iran is not negotiating from a position of weakness. It negotiates with missiles in reserve, in a context where its partners — Russia and China — provide it with diplomatic and economic cover.

The Hormuz card: Tehran's "golden card"

Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi described the Strait of Hormuz as a "golden card" — a master card that Iran can play in negotiation with the West. This formulation is not empty rhetoric. Approximately 20% of the world's oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz. Asserting control over it — even partially, even temporarily — gives Iran leverage over global energy markets that far exceeds its size and economic power. Iran has claimed, according to some reports, "exclusive 30-day management" of the strait — an assertion that has no international recognition but illustrates the logic of assumed confrontation.

In the framework of the trilateral MOU, this Hormuz card has additional value. Russia and China, as Iran's partners, benefit from the Iranian leverage over global energy routes. In exchange, they provide Iran with diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council (Russian and Chinese vetoes against any strong resolution), military technologies, and access to alternative markets for sanctioned Iranian oil. This system of mutual exchanges — where each partner brings what the others lack — is the strength of the trilateral axis. It is not based on shared values or shared ideology. It is based on complementary interests and a common opposition to the Western order.

Hezbollah in Lebanon: the rejection of the framework as a signal

A "humiliating" framework agreement according to Hezbollah

In the same context of June 2026, Hezbollah publicly rejected a proposed framework agreement for Lebanon, calling it "humiliating." This rejection is significant in the analysis of the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis because Hezbollah is Iran's power projection instrument in Lebanon and the Eastern Mediterranean. Its refusal of a framework agreement — which would represent a diplomatic normalization implying concessions through its Iranian proxy — reflects the harder posture adopted by Tehran: do not concede, do not normalize, maintain pressure. This posture is consistent with the strategy of the trilateral MOU: Iran is not seeking to integrate into the Western order — it seeks to build an alternative order where it does not have to make concessions.

Lebanon pays the price of this strategy. A country whose economy has collapsed since 2019, whose post-war reconstruction with Israel is blocked, and whose institutional future is suspended from the good will of an armed organization that responds to Tehran's directives more than to the needs of the Lebanese population. Iran's hard posture through Hezbollah is a demonstration of power — but it is also an admission that this axis is not built for the well-being of the populations of the countries it claims to defend. It is built for the power of the leaders of the states that constitute it.

Iran's missile program: a non-negotiable red line

According to a high-ranking Iranian source cited by TASS on June 25, 2026, Iran is not ready to discuss its missile program in its negotiations with Washington. This position is documented and non-negotiable from the Iranian point of view. The missile program — which includes short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, targets in Southern Europe, and potentially more distant targets — is Iran's central deterrence weapon. It is what Tehran keeps in reserve if its nuclear facilities are struck. It is also what Russia uses in Ukraine, which Iran has supplied in the form of Shahed drones and Fath-360 missiles.

Iran's insistence on excluding missiles from negotiations is consistent with its logic of partnership with Moscow and Beijing. If Iran conceded on missiles in the framework of a nuclear deal with Washington, it would simultaneously lose its regional power projection capacity, its value for Russia as a strike system supplier, and its leverage in future negotiations. The refusal position on missiles is not ideological obstinacy — it is a cold assessment of long-term strategic interests.

Russia in this axis: what it receives and what it gives

The Shaheds, the Fath-360s and the dependency on suppliers

Russia's dependence on its axis allies to sustain its war effort in Ukraine is a documented fact. The Iranian Shahed-136 drones, used en masse for strikes on Ukrainian cities, were supplied by Iran and produced under license on Russian soil since 2023. The Fath-360 missiles, short-range Iranian ballistic missiles, were also transferred according to analyses from NATO and Ukrainian intelligence services. These technology transfers represent a direct contribution to the war against Ukraine — and they attest to the depth of the military partnership between Moscow and Tehran. The trilateral MOU formalizes what already exists in fact.

In exchange, Russia provides Iran with crucial diplomatic protections at the Security Council, advanced military technologies (notably in the aeronautical and naval domains, according to several analyses), and political validation that Iran is not isolated on the international stage. This reciprocal relationship transforms the axis from a simple ideological alignment into a functional alliance based on real exchanges. This is precisely what makes it dangerous: it is not weakened by ideological tensions or historical rivalries between partners, because it rests on concrete and verifiable interests.

The impact on Ukraine: Iranian drones on Ukrainian cities

For Ukrainian cities that live under Shahed drone strikes, the Tehran-Moscow axis is not a geopolitical abstraction. It is the air raid siren at 3 AM, the characteristic sound of the device in the night sky, the explosions on energy infrastructure, hospitals, residential buildings. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Zaporizhzhia — these cities have been struck by hundreds of Shaheds since Russia integrated them into its arsenal in 2022. Ukrainian air defense systems have learned to intercept them more and more effectively — but the mass of the attack, the diversification of trajectories, and the continuous improvements of Iranian versions maintain a pressure that defense cannot entirely eliminate.

Every Shahed that hits Ukrainian infrastructure is the product of a decision made in Tehran — a decision to sell to Russia a technology developed to strike Iran's enemies in the Gulf, which ends up being used to strike Ukrainian families in their apartments. This direct connection between the policy of the trilateral axis and Ukrainian civilian casualties makes any cold and detached analysis of this file impossible. The victims are real. The partnership that produces them is real. And the trilateral MOU will perpetuate it if the West does not respond with sufficient firmness.

China in the axis: the most powerful and most ambiguous partner

Beijing between support for Moscow and protection of its economic interests

China is the most powerful and most ambiguous partner in the trilateral axis. It is the most powerful because its economy — the world's second largest — gives this axis an economic depth that neither Russia nor Iran can provide alone. It is the most ambiguous because it has massive economic interests in the West that it does not want to sacrifice on the altar of ideology. Beijing has carefully avoided providing lethal weapons to Russia — under Western pressure and to protect its exports and investments in Europe and the United States. But it has provided dual-use components, maintained its purchases of Russian oil that allow Moscow to finance its war, and blocked any Security Council resolution that would sanction Russia.

This position of support without lethal weapons is increasingly difficult to maintain as the war in Ukraine drags on and pressure on Russia intensifies. If Russia began to lose significantly on the ground, Beijing would face a difficult choice: let its partner down, at the risk of showing that its support has limits, or cross the red line of lethal weapons, at the risk of provoking a severe Western response on its exports. This structural dilemma is the main vulnerability of the trilateral axis: its members do not all have the same risk tolerance or the same time horizons.

Chinese military AI and the $295 billion plan

The Chinese investment plan of $295 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure, announced on June 9, 2026, fits directly into the context of the trilateral axis. If China succeeds in building a sovereign military AI capability in the next five years — targeting systems, autonomous swarm drones, electronic warfare tools — its capacity to support its trilateral axis partners will be qualitatively different. It will be able to provide Russia and Iran with military technologies that neither can develop alone, without fearing that Western technology sanctions will prevent it — because these technologies will be Chinese, manufactured in China, by Chinese companies, on Chinese infrastructure.

This prospect transforms the trilateral axis into something structurally different by the horizon of 2030. Today, this axis is constrained by its members' technological dependencies on the West. If China lifts this constraint for itself — and progressively transfers this autonomy to its partners — the balance of forces between the two emerging blocs changes in nature. This is not inevitable. But it is the trajectory toward which the $295 billion plan points, and this is why blocking this plan — through export controls, the 1260H list, supply chain diversification — is directly relevant to the future of Ukraine.

The June 2026 American-Iranian framework: the meaning of an ambiguous agreement

A "framework of understanding" that resolves nothing

While the trilateral axis was structuring itself, American and Iranian negotiators were working on what Eurasiareview described as a "framework of understanding" — not a formal agreement. This framework, analyzed in an editorial from June 30, 2026, represents according to that analysis an attempt to find a strategic compromise after a military deadlock: neither the United States nor Iran obtained a decisive victory in recent confrontations, and both parties seem sufficiently exhausted to explore a modus vivendi.

This framework is important, but its limits are obvious. Iran will not give up its missile program. It will not break its partnership with Moscow or Beijing. It will not stop supporting Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi militias. Iranian concessions, if they exist, will concern limited aspects of the nuclear program — temporary enrichment suspension, reduction of the stockpile of enriched uranium — in exchange for partial sanctions relief. This type of agreement has already been tried with the 2015 JCPOA — which collapsed in 2018 when Trump withdrew from it. The probability that a new similar framework has a longer lifespan, in the context of the trilateral axis strengthening, is difficult to assess with optimism.

The diplomatic window and its limits

There is however a logic in pursuing negotiations, even imperfect ones. Every month of negotiation is a month where Iran does not enrich more uranium at levels close to the military threshold. Every partial agreement reduces, even marginally, the stockpile of enriched uranium available. And every formal commitment creates verification mechanisms — such as IAEA inspections — that maintain a certain transparency on the Iranian nuclear program. These benefits are real even if the agreement does not resolve structural problems. The question is whether these marginal benefits are worth the political cost of legitimizing a regime that actively supports the Russian war in Ukraine and strikes American bases in the Gulf.

This is the fundamental tension in American policy toward Iran: containing the nuclear program requires dialogue; defending Ukraine and responding to Iranian strikes on American bases requires firmness. These two objectives feed each other at certain points and conflict at others. The "framework of understanding" is the attempt to find a space where both can coexist — with the compromises this implies and the illusions it maintains.

North Korea: the silent fourth partner

Munitions, ballistic missiles, and technology transfers

North Korea is not part of the trilateral MOU — but it is the silent fourth partner in the anti-Western axis. Since 2023, Pyongyang has delivered to Russia several million 152mm artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles. These deliveries have partially compensated for Russian ammunition shortages and allowed the Russian army to maintain its artillery strike tempo against Ukrainian positions. In exchange, Russia has provided North Korea with space and military technologies — notably for spy satellites and the North Korean nuclear-propelled submarine program — representing significant transfers of strategic capabilities.

This Russia-North Korea relationship is deeper than the ammunition exchanges suggest. It reflects a common logic: two regimes under severe Western sanctions, seeking to mutually strengthen to resist international pressure. If North Korea were to be formally integrated into the trilateral Iran-Russia-China framework, the implications would be considerable — notably because Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons, a capability that neither Iran nor Russia necessarily wants to formally share but whose presence in the axis orbit modifies the Western deterrence calculation.

The cumulative dynamic of authoritarian alliances

Taken individually, none of the members of this anti-Western axis — Russia, Iran, China, North Korea — represents an insurmountable challenge for Western democracies. NATO is militarily superior to Russia in almost all dimensions. The United States has an economy ten times larger than Russia's. The military technologies of the Western alliance are ahead of those of the opposing axis in most areas. But the cumulative dynamic — the addition of complementary capabilities, diplomatic coordination, alternative financial circuits, the volume of North Korean munitions — creates a resistance to Western pressures that exceeds what any single member could exert alone.

This is precisely why the formalization of the trilateral MOU is important beyond its immediate implications. It institutionalizes this cumulative dynamic. It creates permanent coordination mechanisms. It sends a signal to third-party countries that the axis is durable, not opportunistic. And it obliges the democracies to think collectively about their response — not only to immediate crises (Ukraine, nuclear Iran), but to the long-term security architecture they want to build to resist an axis that is structuring itself deliberately and patiently.

Sanctions: effective, insufficient, circumvented

The contrasting record of sanctions against Iran and Russia

For more than four decades against Iran and since 2014 and especially 2022 against Russia, the United States and its allies have used economic sanctions as the main pressure instrument. The record is contrasting. The sanctions have unquestionably reduced the available resources of both regimes — the Iranian economy suffers from exclusion from the global financial system, the Russian economy has experienced significant shocks since the 2022 sanctions. But both regimes have survived, adapted, and found workarounds. The sanctions have failed to change the strategic behaviors of these regimes on the questions that matter most: the Iranian nuclear program and the Russian war in Ukraine.

The circumvention routes are documented and multiple. Iran sells its oil to China and other buyers via opaque circuits that avoid Western financial channels. Russia imports sanctioned goods through third countries — Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia — that serve as circumvention platforms. Both countries have developed alternative financial systems — Russia's SPFS as a partial replacement for SWIFT, trade agreements in local currencies, bilateral payment systems with China and India — that progressively reduce their dependence on the dollar-centered financial system. The trilateral MOU will accelerate these alternatives by institutionalizing them.

The necessity of a response beyond sanctions

If sanctions alone do not change the behaviors of the trilateral axis members, what complementary response can democracies develop? Several tracks deserve serious exploration. First, militarily supporting Ukraine until it is in a position to negotiate a favorable arrangement — a Ukrainian victory or even a difficult status quo for Russia would weaken the most costly partner for Iran and China in the axis. Second, investing massively in alternative technologies that reduce Western dependence on energy and mineral resources that axis members control — Gulf oil, Chinese rare earths, liquefied natural gas. Third, working with Global South countries seeking to diversify their alliances so that the trilateral axis is not the only alternative to the West.

These policies are harder and longer to implement than sanction cycles. They require a strategic vision that extends over decades, a political consistency that transcends electoral alternations, and an inter-allied coordination that overcomes contradictory sectoral and national interests. These are precisely the institutional challenges that democracies find most difficult to meet. But the formation of the trilateral axis makes these challenges unavoidable — and postponing them only increases the cost of the future response.

Ukraine at the center of the axis: the target and the symbol

Why Ukraine is the central stake of the trilateral axis

Ukraine is the convergence point of all dimensions of the trilateral axis. Russia wages the war. Iran feeds it with drones and missiles. China finances it indirectly by buying the oil that gives Moscow the resources to continue it. North Korea contributes to it with munitions. But Ukraine is not only a victim of this axis — it is also its main challenge. Because Ukrainian resistance demonstrates that the axis is not invincible. Because each radar destroyed by Operation Polyphemus, each Shahed intercepted by Ukrainian defenses, each Ukrainian territorial advance contradicts the narrative the axis constructs — that democracies are weak, decadent, incapable of resisting the will of authoritarian regimes.

If Ukraine holds and ultimately obtains an agreement that preserves its integrity and sovereignty, it will be a strategic blow to the trilateral axis. If Ukraine collapses or is forced into massive territorial concessions, it will be a validation of the axis strategy: that brute force, duration, and the support of authoritarian allies can force democracies to yield. This is why the stakes of the war in Ukraine are not only Ukrainian — they are universal for all democracies watching from the stands.

The symbolism of February 24, 2022 and what it still means

On February 24, 2022, when Russian armored columns crossed the Ukrainian border on multiple simultaneous axes — toward Kyiv, toward Kharkiv, from Crimea — the conviction in Moscow was that Ukraine would collapse within days. This conviction was shared by many in Western capitals. It was disproved by Ukrainian resistance, by the Russian defeat around Kyiv, by the death of the lightning-war plans. Four years later, the war continues — but Ukraine is still there, still fighting, still innovating. This fact alone is a response to the trilateral axis. It is not victory. But it is proof that victory is possible.

The trilateral MOU of June 2026 is the axis's response to this unexpected resistance. Since the lightning war did not work, since the sanctions did not break Russia, since the West continues to support Ukraine, the support for Russia must be institutionalized, resources coordinated, and the signal sent that the axis is there for the long term. This is a long-term message. And the Western democracies must respond with their own long-term message: that support for Ukraine has no expiration date, that sanctions will be maintained until a real change of behavior, and that the collective security architecture of NATO is a permanent response to the permanent axis.

What the West should do: a realistic roadmap

Maintain sanctions and strengthen them where they leak

Despite their limits, sanctions remain a necessary tool. What needs to change is their application: systematically identifying and closing circumvention circuits — third-party countries that serve as platforms, banks that facilitate sanctioned transactions, companies that provide dual-use components. This more rigorous application requires enhanced coordination between the United States, the European Union, Japan, and other allies — and sustained diplomatic pressure on third-party countries that profit from circumvention. Turkey, which has maintained commercial relations with Russia while being a NATO member, is the most visible example of this tension — a tension that the allies must address with more clarity than they have so far.

Sanctions on Russian oil revenues deserve particular attention. The Russian oil price cap — introduced in 2022 by the G7 — has been partially circumvented. Russia sells its oil above the cap to buyers who do not participate in the mechanism. Strengthening the cap — by including secondary sanctions on buyers who violate it — would reduce Russian oil revenues more significantly. This mechanism is politically complex — notably because it would affect partners like India — but its potential for pressure on Russian war finances justifies the diplomatic effort.

Arming Ukraine and defeating the axis logic on the ground

The most direct response to the trilateral axis remains support for Ukraine. Not because the war in Ukraine is the only challenge the axis poses, but because a Ukrainian victory — or even an arrangement favorable to Ukraine — would be the most powerful demonstration that the axis strategy does not work. Arming Ukraine sufficiently so that it can maintain its military pressure on Russia, defend its cities and infrastructure, and if possible recover occupied territories — this is the policy that best combines immediate security interests and long-term strategic signaling. And it is the policy that the West must pursue with more consistency and ambition than it has so far.

Long-term signaling is as important as immediate support. The members of the trilateral axis are patient actors. They can wait for the political fatigue of the West — the public's disgust for a distant war, domestic economic concerns, electoral alternations — to reduce support for Ukraine. To counter this attrition strategy, democracies must institutionalize their support for Ukraine — in long-term commitments, multi-year financing mechanisms, and formal security guarantees that do not depend on maintaining a particular political majority in a particular country.

What I retain from these weeks of June 2026

The signals that history sometimes retains only in hindsight

I have no exclusive sources. I have no informant in Tehran or Moscow. What I have is an attentive reading of public sources, a memory of precedents, and a conviction that weak signals deserve as much attention as strong signals. In June 2026, several signals converge toward the same direction: the formalization of the trilateral axis through the MOU, the Iranian strikes on American bases, the refusal to negotiate missiles, the Hezbollah rejection of any compromise arrangement. These signals say that the axis is moving from tactical convergence to a durable strategic architecture. This transition deserves to be named, analyzed, and taken into account in the political decisions of democracies.

History teaches us that authoritarian alliances have often been underestimated in their early phases of structuring. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 surprised the democracies. The Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936 took time to be taken seriously. This is not about mechanically repeating history — conditions are different. But the vigilance that history teaches remains relevant. When three authoritarian governments decide to formalize their cooperation in a trilateral MOU, to coordinate their military demonstrations, and to signal that their partnership is "strategic and permanent" — they should be believed.

The moral dimension: why this is not just geopolitics

Ukrainian civilians, Iranian prisoners, victims of North Korean repression

Geopolitical analyses of the trilateral axis tend to talk about power relations, power balances, strategic equilibria. This framing is necessary — it allows understanding the mechanisms. But it risks erasing the moral dimension of what is happening. Behind every Shahed that falls on a Ukrainian city, there is an Iranian engineer who designed the device — in a country where dissidents are imprisoned for peacefully demonstrating, where young women have been killed for refusing to wear the veil. Behind every North Korean missile delivered to Russia, there is an economy that starves its own population to finance armaments. Behind every Russian veto at the Security Council that protects Iran from stronger sanctions, there are Russian political prisoners in penal colonies.

The Tehran-Moscow-Beijing-Pyongyang axis is an alliance of governments that oppress their own populations as much as they threaten their neighbors. This moral dimension is not a reason for military crusades — but it must inform how democracies respond to this axis. It says that behind the power calculations, there are real lives, real freedoms, real dignities at stake. And that democracies, when they support Ukraine, when they impose sanctions, when they build alternative alliances, are not defending only their abstract geopolitical interests — they are also defending the possibility that humans live freely in their own country.

The trilateral axis and the future of the Middle East: what Tehran really wants

Tehran's strategic vision: a Middle East without American presence

Behind the trilateral MOU and the IRGC's military demonstrations, there is a coherent strategic vision of Iran for the Middle East: a region freed from American military presence, where Tehran would exert preponderant influence through its proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq and Syria — and through the threat of its nuclear program in progress. This vision is not recent — it dates back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution — but it has, since 2022, an external support architecture it never had before: Russia occupied in weakening the United States in Ukraine, China ready to absorb Iranian oil and block sanctions at the Security Council, North Korea supplied with munitions. These partners do not share Tehran's ideological vision — but they share the immediate objective of reducing American capacity to shape the world order.

America's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the difficult management of the war in Ukraine, the internal political tensions in the United States — all of this feeds the conviction in Tehran that American power is in decline and that the moment is favorable for pushing harder. This calculation is not absurd — it is based on real observations of the limits of American power. But it may prove wrong if the United States and its allies choose to demonstrate their resistance — precisely what support for Ukraine, the maintenance of sanctions, and the construction of alternative technological partnerships seek to do.

The Houthis, Iraqi militias, and the geography of Iranian influence

Iran's influence in the Middle East passes through a network of proxies whose geographic reach extends from Lebanon to the Red Sea. The Houthis in Yemen — who have disrupted global maritime traffic in the Red Sea since 2023 with their attacks on commercial and military vessels — are financed, armed, and guided by Tehran. These disruptions have cost the global economy billions in maritime traffic rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope. The militias in Iraq have struck American bases. Hezbollah maintains a tense border with Israel. This proxy network is the geographic infrastructure of Iranian power — it is maintained and reinforced by the resources that the trilateral MOU aims to consolidate.

This network is also Iran's response to its conventional military inferiority against the United States. Iran cannot directly confront the Fifth Fleet in a conventional naval battle. It can disrupt maritime routes through the Houthis, put pressure on American bases through Iraqi militias, maintain tension on Israel's border through Hezbollah. This is a permanent, low-intensity hybrid war strategy, at high cost to the adversary — which fits perfectly into the trilateral partnership with Russia (hybrid war in Ukraine) and China (economic and technological pressure). An alliance of hybrid and attritional wars against democracies, by actors who have all understood that frontal confrontation is losing.

Conclusion: bearing witness to a turning point, even from a chair

History is not always made in great battles

History is sometimes made in discreet diplomatic meetings in Tehran, in memoranda in 14 points, in declarations on X affirming that the strategic partnership "will continue with force." It is made in the decision of an Iranian military engineer to improve the version of the Shahed to bypass Ukrainian defenses. In the signature of a North Korean technician on a delivery order for shells destined for the Ukrainian front. In the accounting calculations of a Chinese bank deciding how to structure a yuan payment for Russian oil. These invisible decisions, made in offices that cameras never film, build the world in which we will live in ten years.

Bearing witness to this — putting words on signals that daily media coverage drowns in noise — is what I can do from my position. I am not the diplomat, nor the soldier, nor the military engineer. I am the columnist who reads, cross-references the information, and writes what he understands. This testimony has its limits — I am wrong, I have my biases, my reading is partial. But even partial, this testimony deserves to be recorded: in June 2026, the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis structured itself a little more. The West was not yet fully aware of it. It should be.

What depends on us

Ukraine's resistance, NATO support, lasting sanctions, investments in alternative technologies, the construction of new alliances in the Global South — all of this is possible. Nothing is inevitable in the trajectory that this trilateral axis seeks to trace. History is open. It is decided in democratic capitals that choose every day between the long vision and the short calculation, between solidarity and withdrawal, between political courage and electoral risk management. This choice — political, collective, daily — is also a form of testimony. And that testimony, future generations will read what we did with it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Biases and positioning

I am pro-democracy and anti-authoritarianism. I consider the Tehran-Moscow-Beijing axis a real threat to the global democratic order. This bias shapes my reading of all events described in this testimony. I have sought to document the facts with precision while maintaining a clear normative reading. All factual claims — the Tehran meeting, the 14-point MOU, the IRGC strikes, the refusal to negotiate missiles — are based on cited public sources.

What I do not know

The exact content of the 14 points of the MOU is not entirely public. The outcome of the American-Iranian negotiations is uncertain at the time of publication. The real depth of military cooperation between axis members — notably the most sensitive technology transfers — is not fully known to the public. I do not claim omniscience on these files.

Sources

Primary sources

Al-Ahram — Iran, Russia, China consulted in Tehran on tripartite MOU — June 13, 2026

Al Jazeera — IRGC doubles down as Iran-US MOU jeopardised by Hormuz strikes — June 28, 2026

News-Pravda — High-ranking Iranian source: Iran will not give up missile program — June 25, 2026

Eurasia Review — The US-Iran Framework of Understanding: Strategic Compromise After Military Deadlock — June 30, 2026

Secondary sources

Foreign Policy — Iran-Russia-China trilateral alignment analysis — June 2026

Kyiv Independent — Iranian drones in Ukraine war — coverage June 2026

19FortyFive — Axis of authoritarians analysis — June 2026

Euromaidanpress — North Korean munitions Russia Ukraine war — June 2026