President Donald Trump this week told Europe and Asia to “grab” and “cherish” the Strait of Hormuz, which he claims is of no concern to the United States; Britain hosted a meeting of countries desperate to jumpstart the flow of energy; and China issued a likely ineffectual five-point plan for a ceasefire. Middle East Policy’s free special issue, Washington’s War on Iran, features several analyses of how Arab states have tried to isolate the Islamic Republic, while Tehran has looked East as a gambit against regime change.
For a moment late in the week, it appeared that Iran could ease fears through an Oman-brokered effort to “oversee” traffic through the strait. It is clear, however, that despite Tehran’s hope that looking East could protect the regime, global energy and shipping will return to the status quo ante only if Trump decides to guarantee it.
The 14 free-to-read articles in this special issue explain Tehran’s response to the June 2025 war, the key pillars of Iran’s defense strategy, the clerical-military leadership, and the roots of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s hostility toward the United States. The studies also explore the country’s weaknesses through the voices of protesters, data on poverty, and a probe of its oil trade under crippling sanctions. The issue concludes with a look at the parallels with the 2003 Iraq invasion, especially the groupthink that produced the American folly. If you find this article useful, please forward it to others you believe will benefit; register to receive our weekly updates here. And please follow us on the social media platforms X and LinkedIn.
In a new article featured in the special issue, Ronen Yitzhak explores how Jordan and the Arab Gulf states forged a Sunni alliance against Iran. After the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the hands of the US military, these countries quickly discovered shared interests based on perceptions of Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, regional proxy network, and drive for hegemony. They soon established “a powerful, largely covert, anti-Shiite axis—an alignment, shaped by shared strategic interests, that had been cultivated over the previous two decades, primarily by Jordan,” Yitzhak demonstrates. Jordan played a central role in creating this de facto alliance, facilitating intelligence sharing, diplomatic coordination, and even discussions of military options. This helped to bind the key Arab states into a common front with Israel. The result was a major strategic constraint on Iran.
However, Yitzhak shows, this alignment began to fray after the October 7 attacks, the Gaza war, and the two-year weakening of Iran’s regional position. Israel’s increasingly aggressive posture made it appear less a defensive partner than a source of instability, and the perceived urgency of countering Tehran withered. These trends, combined with renewed attention to the Palestinian issue, exposed the underlying fragility of what had always been a tactical rather than fully institutionalized coalition.
Still, even before the Hamas attacks of 2023, Iran faced not only mounting regional pressure but also near-total isolation from Western economic powers. Against this backdrop, Tehran increasingly looked beyond its immediate region to reshape its global position. Nicole Bayat Grajewski and Sara Bazoobandi, in separate contributions to the special issue, analyze how China became a willing partner to help Tehran mitigate the effects of sanctions and embed itself in an emerging multipolar order. Beijing offered economic opportunity, diplomatic space, and a framework for resisting US dominance. However, the two articles underscore the limits of this partnership due especially to Beijing’s pragmatism and its reluctance to directly confront Washington in Asia’s periphery.
Grajewski emphasizes the normative commonalities that underpin Iran’s turn to the East, particularly through membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is led by China and Russia. She argues that Iran’s interest in the SCO is less about material gains than alignment with states that share its emphasis on sovereignty, noninterference, and resistance to Western liberalism. “By the nature of the group’s strategic culture,” she writes, “the SCO has functioned as a regime-preservation network that provides authoritarian governments with opportunities to cooperate and coordinate their efforts to suppress dissent and maintain domestic stability.” Tehran’s participation thus reflects an effort to situate itself within a non-Western institutional order that legitimizes its domestic and foreign policy choices.
While Grajewski focuses on normative compatibility and institutional legitimation, Bazoobandi presents the Iran-China relationship as grounded in strategic and material interests. She argues that the Islamic Republic has deepened ties with Beijing to secure economic survival under sanctions, reposition itself in the Gulf, and project power beyond its immediate region. “China has remained Iran’s largest trade partner for more than a decade,” she notes, and has been “instrumental in Tehran’s efforts to circumvent US sanctions and maintain the regime’s financial bloodline.” The bilateral ties have expanded into technology and military domains. Iran’s leadership views this alignment with Beijing as taking advantage of a perceived decline in American hegemony.
Despite the promise of Iran’s looking East, Grajewski and Bazoobandi emphasize the risks. China has been reluctant to transform the SCO into an overtly anti-Western bloc, Grajewski argues, and to avoid direct confrontation with the United States, the East Asian giant has been ambivalent about fully backing Iran. Bazoobandi provides examples of this caution: Chinese firms and banks have curtailed engagement due to US sanctions on Iran, and major agreements like the 2021 China-Iran Comprehensive Strategic Partnership have often fallen short. Taken together, the two accounts suggest a relationship that is meaningful but bounded. Beijing is willing to engage and even support Iran only if this does not threaten its broader global interests.
You can find more incisive examinations in The Israel-Iran War, our previous special issue on the 2025 campaign against Iran’s nuclear capacity. And check out the Middle East Policy Council’s website for insights from its analysts.
Middle East Policy, Washington’s War on Iran
TEHRAN’S PERILOUS POSITION
The June 2025 Israeli War: Iran’s Assessment and Regional Consequences
Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi, 2025
Jordan’s Role in Establishing a Sunni-Israeli Alliance
Ronen Yitzhak, 2026
Iran’s Strategies in Response to Changes in US-China Relations
Sara Bazoobandi, 2024
CAN REGIME CHANGE SUCCEED?
Clerics and Generals: Assessing the Stability of the Iranian Regime
Hadi Sohrabi, 2018
Iran’s Supreme Leader: An Analysis of His Hostility Toward the US and Israel
Thomas Buonomo, 2018
Iran’s Defense Strategy: The Navy, Missiles, and Cyberweaponry
Gawdat Bahgat | Anoushiravan Ehteshami, 2017
Iran and the SCO: The Quest for Legitimacy and Regime Preservation
Nicole Bayat Grajewski, 2023
ISLAMIC REPUBLIC’S SOCIAL & ECONOMIC CRISES
The 2022 Iran Protests: The View from the Streets
Rauf Rahimi | Sajjad Rezaei, 2025
Bargain and Barter: China’s Oil Trade with Iran
Shirzad Azad, 2023
Poverty in Iran: A Critical Analysis
Arvin Khoshnood, 2019
ECHOES OF THE IRAQ INVASION
Invading Iraq: The Road to Perpetual War
Ronald Bleier, 2002
Reinventing Iraq: The Regional Impact of US Military Action
Judith Yaphe, 2002
Drinking the Kool-Aid
W. Patrick Lang, 2004
Coping with Kaleidoscopic Change in the Middle East
Chas W. Freeman Jr., 2013
BOOK REVIEWS
Javad Heiran-Nia, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf
Reviewed by Mahmood Monshipouri
Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez, How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare
Reviewed by Bahram P. Kalviri
Robert J. Lieber, Indispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in a Turbulent World
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce