Triple Axis: Iran's Relations with Russia and China by Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai (review)

This book is about attempts to construct narrative discourses within a political philosophy negative space. It is about differing constructions of legitimacy and three different, interlocking struggles to articulate an ideology in the shadows of its opposition. The three states under examination are united by a common cause, not a unified ideological framework, and yet this book is about the internal logical conflicts of Iran's, Russia's, and China's attempts to construct a narrative of legitimacy for an idea that barely exists: the "not West."

This alternative to the West is the core thread that weaves these countries together, and it comes from something deeper than simple opposition to the Western system of international order. Iran, China, and Russia have legitimacy rooted in civilizational genesis—a system of thinking, a group identity, and a collective identity that are at least as deep and as old as the germination of Western civilizational institutions. China's characteristic as a civilizational state is now a cliché in political science. Russia is the self-appointed successor state to the Eastern Roman Empire and deacon of Orthodox Christianity. Iran's civilizational legitimacy is both as Persia and as self-nominated carrier of its own politically revisionist Islam into the region and the world. All three have ambitious, revisionist, revivalist, and restorative foreign policies.

Ariane Tabatai and Dina Esfandiary explore this political-institutional connection, how all states involved are playing multiple games in multiple dimensions. However, for all the development of the Iran-Russia and Iran-China vectors, the relationship that this book actually highlights as being incredibly important is the one between the Iran and the European Union. This trade and security vector is given much more emphasis in the book than the "institutional flankings" of the book's eponymous Russia and China relationships. For Iran, the European Union is an alternative counterweight to the United States, representing both an in-game and out-game institutional relationship.

For foreign observers of Iran, disaggregation is important. To be able to identify and hear multiple competing voices and factions without resort to monolithic policy, ideology, or governance analyses of Tehran is key to understanding Iran's various motivations. The authors make this point well in relation to Iran. In addition to temporal linear changes in narratives from Mohammad Khatami to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and back to Hassan Rouhani, there is an institutionalized transfer of policy and ideology in the power structure in Iran—not a consistent overarching narrative—that is neither antagonistic nor open to dialogue with the West.

Iran is presented as multifaceted and multilayered. However, Russia and particularly China remain monolithic and monotone in the authors' analysis. If Russia and China are a two-part epoxy that solidifies Iran's geo-economic policy, then this book should be binding multiple smaller connec tions into a contiguous whole. Instead, we get the top-down big-picture analysis, but without sufficient depth.

The chapter layout of the book is logical if somewhat formulaic. The Iran-Russia-China nexus is introduced as a concept in the international system; domestic political relations with Russia and China are explored. The authors then cover economic relations, defense and security; and offer a concluding chapter on the future of Iran after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It may have been more useful to have more indepth Iran-China and Iran-Russia analyses—whole chapters that examine the political personnel and policy-making processes and changes. Inasmuch as the authors appear to be much more comfortable with Iranian domestic political history and how it intersects with Russia, a purely domestic Iran policy– focused book that examined the China or Russia influences on domestic economy, political, military and social affairs would have been preferable. The final product could have been a really incisive examination of international, national, and subnational policy-making in Iran with regards to both Russia and China. The...