OAN Commentary by: Richard Pollock
Friday, March 27, 2026
Most observers of the war in the Middle East focus on the numbers: the surge of missile and drone attacks, the number of U.S. and Israeli air sorties and of course, the human casualties.
But there is another way to assess the war: the mounting negative fallout for China and Russia as it watches its own alliances begin to unravel throughout the world since February 28 when the war began.
Specifically, are Beijing and Moscow’s ongoing military support for Tehran shredding its famed anti-Western alliance called BRICS?
As is expected, the shallowness and incompleteness of war reporting in the West continues. As a former Pentagon producer for ABC’s “Good Morning America” who for nearly a decade personally accompanied American troops, I know that war correspondents crunch numbers and do little else.
But for the most part, two major developments of the war have been underreported.
One is that both Russia and China have launched a robust military program of Iranian rearmament. They regard the Iran warfront along with the Ukraine conflict to be part of their same mission, that is, to weaken the West.
The second is that Moscow and Beijing are seeing their carefully built set of international alliances unravel before their very eyes. This is a major miscalculation by both countries that’s likely to have far-reaching global consequences, none of them in favor of China or Russia.
One reporter who has exposed the Russia-China rearmament is Adrian Blomfield, the Daily Telegraph’s senior foreign correspondent. He noted this week that, “For Russia and China, Iran and Ukraine may be different theatres, but they form part of the same struggle – one pitting an authoritarian alignment against a weakening Western-led order.”
He adds, “On the battlefield, the overlap is already visible. Shahed drone fragments bearing Cyrillic markings have been found in Dubai while officials believe Russian satellite intelligence has helped Iran strike US bases in six Arab states. Drone swarm tactics, homed in Ukraine, and observed by Iranian officers stationed in Crimea, are now being deployed across the Middle East.”
Veteran defense and strategic analyst Stephen Bryen has reached the same conclusion.
Bryen told me, “There is no doubt the Russians and Chinese are shipping arms to Iran. The Caspian sea is a likely entry point, although they may also attempt to unload at places such as Chabahar, which is very close to the Pakistan border.”
Chabahar is an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman and is Iran’s only ocean-access port as well as a key gateway to deliveries to Asia, particularly to India.
At the outset of the war, it appeared that Russia and China thought they could easily win over Third World opinion. As they poured weaponry into Iran, they guessed the vast majority of the Third World nations would rally behind them and behind Iran – as they have done in previous East-West crises.
But in fact, their rearmament of Iran may have immensely backfired.
Not only have their rearmament efforts failed to strengthen Moscow and Beijing’s prestige in the world, but it may also have begun to shred its existing relationships, specifically the global alliance the two countries lead called BRICS.
Originally BRICS was composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, hence the acronym. It was designed to use their geopolitical influence to challenge and combat Western dominance.
Since 2024, China and Russia were in very high spirits about BRICS as it dramatically expanded. Key Third World countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia – joined the bloc.
But now it appears the BRICS alliance may be unraveling.
As India Today observed on March 22, “The U.S-Israeli war on Iran is tearing the BRICS alliance apart at the seams.”
And since Iran launched relentless attacks against its neighboring Sunni Muslim states, BRICS member states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have broken away from Beijing and Moscow and are openly denouncing Tehran.
Virtually all Middle Eastern states now say that Iran has destroyed their trust. This is a remarkable geopolitical development.
And Egypt, another BRICS member, is part of the Pakistan and Turkish initiative to start ceasefire talks with the Trump administration. The Iranian slap-down of the initiative is another diplomatic rupture that may cause additional headaches for both Moscow and in Beijing.
The potential loss of all these Middle Eastern states must be causing shockwaves within the halls of Presidents Putin and Xi.
But also remarkable is that the anti-Western BRICS as a group has remained silent since the beginning of the war.
Notably, India is the current chair of BRICS. Until recently, it was a major importer of Russian oil and a founding member of the BRICS alliance
But it seems that giant India may be drifting away from the anti-Western alliance too. Under pressure from President Trump, New Delhi has stopped buying Russian oil and has refused to take sides in the conflict.
FP an international media outlet recently ran an article titled, “BRICS Meets Reality in the Middle East War “by C. Raja Mohan, a former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board.
Mohan wrote, “Two weeks into the war in the Persian Gulf, BRICS has issued no joint statement on the conflict.”
Instead, India has been quiet about the war. As the German publication DW put it, “India has so far avoided taking sides in the conflict, urging restraint, deescalation and a return to dialogue — something analysts say Washington interprets as strategic positioning rather than solidarity with Iran.”
It’s also interesting that only days before the war began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel and warmly embraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the outcomes are similar. The Diplomat, a news magazine for the Asia-Pacific region stated this week, “the crisis is quickly evolving into more than a regional security issue. It is becoming an important test of the political coherence and strategic maturity for BRICS.”
Indonesia, another BRICS member, also has been conspicuously silent during the war. Only a week before the war began, Indonesia joined Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza. Dr Jannus TH Siahaan, writing in the Middle East Monitor observed, “When the United States and Israel struck Tehran in February, Jakarta’s response was conspicuously muted.”
Africa may not be different. Uganda’s startling pledge to fight alongside Israel in the war shows that Moscow and China’s attempt to seduce Africa may be faltering.
Uganda’s Chief of Defense Forces, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba stated that the Ugandan military (UPDF) is prepared to support Israel in its ongoing conflict in the Middle East. He is believed to be a leading candidate as its next president.
In Nigeria, Al Chukwuma OKOLI a security analyst from the state-owned University of Lafia wrote that his country is tilting away from Iran, which has been a sponsor of terrorism through proxies within the African country.
He writes, “the Iran-Israel-US war poses three fundamental threats to Nigeria’s national security. There could be: heightened attacks by terrorists affiliated with Iranian Islamists; increased violence between Christians and Muslims; and arms flows into Nigeria from Iran and its ideological allies, such as Hezbollah.”
Many other African countries that have been ravaged by Islamic Jihad atrocities – such as those in the 13 African Sahel that have been ravaged by Islamic terrorists. All of those countries are on edge and fear that they will see a new upsurge in Islamic attacks because of the Iran war.
Indeed, the war’s outcome may change the geopolitical alignment within the Middle East, with Israel and its Sunni Muslim neighbors uniting for the first time since the Second World War.
But in a larger context, the war may extinguish many of China and Russia’s current worldwide alliances, thereby greatly altering both countries power and influence.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Richard Pollock is a former New Left activist and was a roommate with Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis. He understands New Left strategy and tactics. For four decades, Richard was an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C. Among his positions, he served as the senior investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller News Foundation, and at OAN. While at OAN he served in the Washington, D.C. bureau and hosted its investigative reporting specials. He is semi-retired and his posts from D.C. can be read on Substack.com
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