Iran sees China and Russia as friends. But where are they now?

ISTANBUL — Despite having long been treated as a pariah by the West and isolated by United States sanctions, the revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained diplomatic, commercial and military ties with several countries.

Türkiye and India have maintained relations with the country on trade and security issues. China looked to Iran for cheap oil. North Korea, Venezuela and Russia saw him as an ally in their fight against the West and conspired with Tehran to develop military technology and circumvent sanctions.

Now that Iran finds itself under attack from the United States and Israel, these friends, neighbors and partners have little more than words to offer the Islamic Republic. They themselves, in turn, can become targets. On Wednesday (4), Turkey stated that NATO shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran that was heading into Turkish airspace. On Thursday, Iran denied targeting Turkey.

Without real allies, it is a lonely war for Iran.

This is a result, experts say, of Iranian foreign policy, which avoided making commitments to other countries while investing in militias that share its hatred, fueled by religious reasons, for the United States and Israel.

These militias cannot help Iran now. The most formidable of these, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, have been worn down by wars with Israel. The Houthi militia in Yemen and Iranian-backed Iraqi armed groups are able to attack ships in the Red Sea or US forces in Iraq. But such attacks are unlikely to change the course of a war within Iran itself.

Nor have Iran’s relationships with other states resulted in concrete support, not even from those united by their animosity toward what they see as Western imperialism.

“It’s a harsh awakening for those who believed there was an emerging anti-Western axis,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and director of EDAM, an Istanbul-based think tank.

Referring to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, he said: “Now you see that it means nothing when one of these four countries is under siege from the West.”

Most countries that maintain ties with Iran do so out of strategic, geographic or economic necessity, giving them little reason to make sacrifices when Iran is under attack, experts said.

Now, these relationships may not protect them.

Turkey shares a border of about 300 miles with Iran, has long-standing diplomatic and commercial ties and has also tried to avoid war.

Ulgen characterized Turkey’s approach toward Iran as rooted in history and guided by proximity and “grudging respect.”

“We are not friends with Iran, we don’t agree on many things, but we have to coexist in this geographic space,” he said.

Despite a cordial relationship with President Donald Trump, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey called the US and Israeli attacks on Iran a “clear violation of international law.” On Monday, he said on social media that he was “saddened” by the death of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Turkish officials are working to stop the war, not because they sympathize with Iranian leaders, but because they fear that instability in Iran could spread to Turkey, as has occurred in previous conflicts in Iraq and Syria, which also border the country.

The fall of the government in Tehran could be even worse, Ulgen said.

“The kind of instability that regime change could create could be an order of magnitude greater than what we saw in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

India has also engaged with Iran as an important player in its region and in search of economic advantages, according to Kabir Taneja, executive director of the Observer Research Foundation Middle East, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Ties with Iran have not prevented India from becoming Israel’s biggest arms buyer, with Indian purchases accounting for 34% of total Israeli sales between 2020 and 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Visiting Israel a few days before the war, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to the Israeli Knesset, received a parliamentary honor and signed trade agreements with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu.

India’s balancing game between Israel, Iran and other countries means the country will stay away from the war in Iran, Taneja said.

“Indian foreign policy is clear on this point: it does not get involved in other people’s affairs,” he said.

Other countries that maintain relations with Iran and also host US troops have become targets as Iran reacts.

Iran has fired drones and missiles at Qatar, with which it shares an offshore gas field; against the United Arab Emirates, an important trading partner; and against Oman, a key mediator in talks with the United States that sought to avoid war.

Iran has received little support from partner countries that share its hostility to the West.

North Korea condemned the war but did little beyond that, and Venezuela’s stance has changed since the United States ousted President Nicolás Maduro in January.

China remains Iran’s largest trading partner, largely because it buys more than three-quarters of Iran’s oil, which it gets at a significant discount due to U.S. sanctions.

China called for restraint, criticized Khamenei’s murder as “unacceptable” and appointed an envoy to mediate. It is unlikely to directly challenge the United States, analysts said, lest it shake up a fragile truce ahead of Trump’s expected visit to China in April.

Russia has been Iran’s closest state ally in resisting the West for more than a decade.

“There is this growing alignment and resentment toward the global order and the U.S. alliance system,” said Hanna Notte, director of the Eurasia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Russia has provided some military equipment to Iran, but its support has been limited, Notte said, in part because Moscow did not want to complicate its relationship with Israel.

Now that Iran is at war, Russia will likely maintain its policy of avoiding direct military conflict with Israel and the United States in the Middle East, Notte said.

This will likely limit Russia’s contribution to defending Iran at the United Nations and other international forums.

“The Russians have defended the Iranians quite aggressively,” Notte said of Russian diplomacy. “But that doesn’t help Iran much in this situation.”