On July 17, an Iranian missile struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, killing three American soldiers and wounding four others. The strike was unusually precise. In the weeks that followed, U.S. officials discovered that before the attack, Tehran had received high-resolution satellite images of the base that could aid its targeting. Afterward, Iran obtained more imagery, potentially helping it assess the damage and hone future attacks. The images came from Chinese entities.

China is not alone in assisting Iran. Russia, too, has helped Tehran find and hit American and allied targets. Two days before the March 27 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that wounded 12 American personnel, 14 Russian spy satellites passed overhead. U.S. officials later concluded that Moscow had fed Iran satellite intelligence that aided Iranian precision strikes. Moscow has also provided Iran with weapons and military expertise, including upgraded versions of Iranian drones refined on the battlefield in Ukraine, and Russian engineers are helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles that could evade U.S. and Israeli air defenses.

Neither Russia nor China has directly entered Iran’s war with the United States. They haven’t needed to. By providing intelligence on American targets, military technology and components, and economic and diplomatic support, they can give Iran what it needs without joining its war.

The United States entered the conflict with advantages its adversaries lacked: a vast network of formal allies, military bases, intelligence-sharing arrangements, defense partnerships, and interoperable forces spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Yet many of Washington’s traditional partners were reluctant to associate themselves with the campaign, and some denied the United States specific forms of military access, at least for a time. Others publicly resisted U.S. calls to help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

The contrast illustrates a striking shift since we first described Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as an axis of upheaval in Foreign Affairs two years ago. The United States’ adversaries began this war with this weaker network, and Washington with the far stronger one. But after helping Russia fight its war in Ukraine over the past few years, members of the axis are now finding ways to make their network work in a new theater. They are fine-tuning their cooperation to make their partners more resilient—and more dangerous to the United States—while limiting costs and risks. Washington, for its part, is creating friction in many of its partnerships instead of deepening them, and risks squandering its network just as its adversaries are learning to make more of theirs.

Much has changed since 2024. Most obviously, the United States itself has become a source of upheaval in the international system. The Trump administration has challenged international institutions, strained traditional alliances, and adopted a more transactional approach to foreign policy. It has upended trade agreements, threatened the sovereignty of allies such as Canada and Denmark, and embraced unpredictability. It has also pursued improved relations with China, North Korea, and Russia while seeking to weaken Iran. None of this has loosened the ties among the United States’ adversaries.

Early in the Trump administration, U.S. officials expressed hope that normalizing relations with Moscow might peel Russia away from the group. Yet President Donald Trump’s oft-expressed bonhomie toward the Kremlin has opened no gaps with the other three. As seen from Moscow, the administration has been unable to deliver a deal on Ukraine, and any Trump-driven rapprochement with Washington is unlikely to endure: Congress continues to pressure Russia, and a future administration may well adopt a tougher........

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