The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has presented Russia and China with a significant opportunity. Both Moscow and Beijing see the conflict as a chance to undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. Both are keen to exploit the war to sap U.S. power, gain intelligence on U.S. military systems, and erode the U.S.-led order. Both see a wide variety of potential options for doing so, diplomatic and military, overt and covert. And so far, both countries are succeeding.

The quagmire endured by Russian forces in Ukraine offers a model for the sorts of damage Moscow and Beijing hope to inflict on the United States. The U.S. government has backed Kyiv since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022 for reasons beyond supporting a smaller democracy against its bigger authoritarian neighbor. The war in Ukraine helps tie down a U.S. adversary, degrades Russian power, and costs the Kremlin tens of billions of dollars every year. Russia’s struggle to defeat a nominally weaker power also undermines perceptions of its military capabilities while forcing Moscow to devote more soldiers, munitions, and equipment just to maintain what has turned into a functional stalemate. Meanwhile, the United States can study the conflict to deepen its understanding of the Russian military’s tactics, techniques, and procedures. The Biden administration also saw support for Ukraine as a way to reaffirm Washington’s position as the leader of a rules-based international order. The widely held view that Russia had undertaken a war of aggression in Ukraine, combined with the fear that an emboldened Moscow would again engage in territorial acquisition in the future, allowed the United States to bring together like-minded powers to help isolate Russia.

In Iran, Russia and China see the possibility of turning the tables on the United States. Both countries believe that a U.S. government enmeshed in endless Middle Eastern wars is one that would make much less trouble for them. Indeed, China’s international position improved remarkably in the 20 years after the September 11 attacks, when the United States was preoccupied with wars in the Middle East. As Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar memorably noted: “[F]or two decades, China had been winning but not fighting [in the Middle East], while the U.S. was fighting without winning.”

Moscow and Beijing now want to reap the rewards of Washington’s entanglement in the region. The Russians and the Chinese have every interest in miring the United States in a simmering, low-intensity war that consumes U.S. resources and undermines its international standing. Both countries have tools to help achieve that end through their support for Iran. Washington can prevent this outcome by eschewing maximalist goals in the conflict. It must instead follow a pragmatic middle way that contains Iran’s disruptive potential while shoring up a path back to diplomacy and revitalizing American alliances. The Iran war may not produce a clear victor, but the United States can ensure that neither China nor Russia ends up claiming the win.

RECIPE FOR A QUAGMIRE

There is strong evidence that Russia and China have supplied Iran with imagery and signals intelligence to help it with both targeting and damage assessment. If that has indeed happened, they have helped a country with quite limited surveillance capacity destroy the military assets of a much more powerful country. Russia and China have also been monitoring American military operations, studying the U.S. military through the Iran war, just as the United States is assessing the Russian military through the war in Ukraine. Although the United States, alongside Israel, has been largely successful........

© Foreign Affairs