Triple Axis: Iran's Relations with Russia and China

November 14, 2018
New York, NY

The most significant challenge to the post-Cold War international order is the growing power of ambitious states opposed to the West. Iran, Russia, and China are taking advantage of the U.S. withdrawal from the world stage and while they seek opportunity, cooperation between them remains fragmentary.

Join us for breakfast and a conversation with authors Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai on their comprehensive study of how Iran interacts with Russia and China in the realms of energy, trade, and military security. With the end of Western sanctions and the Iranian nuclear deal, the Syrian conflict, and new institutions in Central and East Asia, the potential for unity or divergence is striking and the result will shape global politics for decades to come.

SPEAKER BIOS

Dina Esfandiary
Fellow, The Century Foundation

Dina Esfandiary is a fellow at The Century Foundation. Her research focuses on Persian Gulf security, Iran’s foreign relations, and relations between states and non-proliferation in the Middle East. She is also an international security program research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and an adjunct fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Programme. Prior to this, she was a fellow at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) in the War Studies Department at King’s College London. She worked in the non-proliferation and disarmament programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London from October 2009.

She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Washington Post, International Affairs, the National Interest, Arms Control Today, and The Washington Quarterly. Dina is the co-author of Triple-Axis: Iran’s Relations with Russia and China (I.B Taurus, 2018), and Living on the Edge: Iran and the Practice of Nuclear Hedging (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is completing her PhD in the War Studies Department at King’s College London and she holds master’s degrees from King’s College London and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Ariane Tabatabai
Associate political scientist, RAND Corporation

Ariane M. Tabatabai is an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is also a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a Truman national security fellow. Tabatabai’s research interests include, Middle East, South Asia, terrorism and insurgency, arms control and nonproliferation, personnel and force structure.

Prior to joining RAND, she served as the director of curriculum and a visiting assistant professor of security studies at the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and an international civilian consultant for NATO. Previously, Tabatabai was a post-doctoral fellow (2017-18) in the International Security Program and a Stanton nuclear security fellow (2013-14) in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where she was also an associate (2014–2015). Tabatabai also held positions as a non-resident scholar with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute; senior associate in the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and adjunct senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for A New American Security (CNAS). She holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London.

She is the co-author of Triple Axis: Iran’s Relations With Russia and China and has published widely in academic, policy, and mainstream outlets, including International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.

Moderator: Thanassis Cambanis
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

Thanassis Cambanis is an author, journalist and fellow at The Century Foundation, who specializes in the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. He is co-director of TCF’s “Arab Politics beyond the Uprisings.” His most recent book, Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story (Simon and Schuster: 2015), chronicles Egyptian efforts to create a new political order. His first book, A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, was published in 2010. He writes “The Internationalist” column for The Boston Globe Ideas, and regularly contributes to The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and The New York Times.

[smirhash]

we like it or not, this lectures proves that Iran is a highly calculating and pragmatic regional power, acting rationally and in its own interest in international scene. same as other countries, its foreign and domestic policies could have different rhetoric. unfortunately the western media have so far implied Iran is irrational and acts self suicidal.

[lanvywynn]

1:04:12 “Needless to say it’s [assassination of general Suleiman] not going to happen...”. Clearly, it’s important to HEAR the experts but keep in mind that they are often wrong

[williamr.lacerda]

Would you see my strange point if I proved that gender ideology and politics in the U.S.A. can indirectly and certainly feed a crisis between the U.S.A. and the China-Russian-Iran triplet?

Sounds weird, but I will wierdly explain my view if you give me an eye patiently: PLEASE!

Gender and gay politics in the spectrum of victimhood politics, philosophically not being politically correct, is highly at vogue worldwide, as an ideological perfect example of socialism cored by gayism or nongenderism or transgenderism. These issues are in the core of the heart of whatever can be called social or humanistic politics worldwide nowadays. If you think of politics without raising this ideology to the utmost urgent priority to "save" the world, you won't be fit to be a high-rank politican anymore. It is not about therapeutical laboral folk's articraft and cultural diversity anymore.

You Americans are investing in your own cultural and ethnographic extinction indirectly in the age-long process. In South America being a real authentic communism or socialist has to do indirectly and directly with being faithful to the core authentic communism's origins, Mao revolution to Russian communist rise. This is has become an irreversible catch-22 situation, because Americans create media technology, China copies; America creates a new concept of socialist and humanistic ideology, China and Russia profits from it. In South America is not possible to allege to have any trait of socialism without making concessions to the commercial transmediatic ideo-narcissistic self-cult culture. Internet social media appealing to relational and narcissistic commercial socialism is the body is the body of this great revoltion and its very heart. Would you give a shot back in your own heart?


Americans are working freely for masonic political Triplet Russia-China-Islamic nations because you Americans create ideologies with a very high social appeal for the masses empowering them with an ideo-narcissistic self-worth mirrored from tv and internet that are indissociable from what is considered authentic socialism and communism here in South America and around the world because these basic political ideologies are subsequently faithful and allied to its origins: and its origins are from Russia or China. So, the more desperate to gain public appeal to attain power by using gender and gay ideologies, the harder you are working freely for the polarization towards the Russia-China-Islamic nations triplet. The United States creates, China copies, and that will be the practice off in the deal because it is a strict question of economial survivance for them more than social harmony and commercial agreements. They will not abide to what they sign up for a long time.

They are oversexualizing whatever correctness or validness of social and humanistic politics and actions by raising the transgender causes to the main utmost priority of health budget allocation pyramid. This sacrifices urgent life-or-death treatments and surgeries. Whenever you allocate budget for gay parades, gay causes, gay victimhood politics, abortion victimhood politics, etc, you are sacrificing a life. They leaped from anti-homophobia politics to gay indroctrination on the basis of gay victimhood as a pretext. They are forgetting all about articraft and artistical varieties of the diversity of cultural laboral therapy of the avarage poor social folks with a great potential for peacemaking and harmony to promote the beast inside, the id's appeal, the corrupted side of our selves that have to do with the voracious capitalism more than socialism. They are victimizing gays at the upper-most layer of social and political pyramid of political priorities and sexualizing politics. Health budget for treating unargumentably more crucial and urgent diseases, and for performing surgeries and terminal or highly expensive treatments are being decreased or set astray for gay fetiches and agendas.