Iran's turn to the East is accelerating. As long-running talks with the United States over a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal falter, and amid worries in Tehran that an independent Israeli military option might indeed be on the table, the Islamic Republic is stepping up its strategic "Plan B" – and looking further eastward for both security and prosperity. Earlier this month, at the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Iranian officials formally signed a "Memorandum of Obligations," kicking off a year long process for their country to become the strategic bloc's newest member. If all goes well, the Islamic Republic will be inducted into the SCO as a full-fledged member at next year's summit in New Delhi, India. For Iran, the occasion marked the culmination of a long-running lobbying effort.

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These days, to say China isn't popular in Washington is something of an understatement. The past several years have seen our dominant view of that country change dramatically. More and more, U.S. officials and ordinary Americans are gravitating away from the notion that China can be a constructive actor on the world stage, and toward the idea that Beijing has become a serious strategic competitor (and perhaps even an adversary)—not just of the United States, but of the Western liberal order more broadly. That realization is dawning among key American partners, as well. Britons, Australians, and publics in numerous other developed nations now hold profoundly negative views of China, as a Pew Research Center poll released this summer recently highlighted. A great deal of this shift can be attributed to China's increasingly aggressive foreign policy maneuvers under the guidance of its current president (and Communist Party secretary), Xi Jinping. Its malfeasance and disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed significantly, too. And more and more Western nations have become worried about the risks of extensive dependence on a country that has proven itself to be an intrusive, and manipulative, economic partner. But this new consensus is far from universal. Throughout what is collectively known as the "Global South" (encompassing developing parts of the world like Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia), China is now more popular than the United States.

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A high-profile killing took place in Moscow last month — a killing with potentially massive implications, both for the war in Ukraine and for the stability of Russian President Vladimir Putin's government. On Aug. 20, a car bombing in Moscow took the life of Darya Dugina. The 29-year-old Dugina was an ultranationalist activist. Earlier this year, she had been sanctioned by both the U.S. and U.K. governments for her role in spreading Kremlin propaganda. Dugina's most distinguishing attribute, however, was that she was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, the far-right philosopher and "Eurasianist" ideologue whose views about Russian empire and the need for confrontation with the West have become popular within the Kremlin's corridors of power. Indeed, it was Dugin who had articulated the concept of "Novorossiya" (New Russia) that served as part of the justification for Russia's 2014 invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Dugin has been a prominent cheerleader for Putin's Ukraine campaign — and for the subsequent expansion of the conflict to other territories that Moscow covets. Not surprisingly, most of the coverage of Dugina's killing has depicted it as a failed attempt to eliminate her father. But by whom? A variety of theories have proliferated. 

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How is Russia faring in its war of choice against Ukraine? With Moscow's military campaign against its western neighbor now at its six-month mark, the tally is both simple and stark: by virtually every metric, the past half-year has been nothing short of ruinous for the Kremlin.

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The Islamic Republic of Iran, now 43 years old, has proven itself to be remarkably resilient in weathering both geopolitical turbulence and domestic hardships. In doing so, it has defied the predictions of numerous scholars and pundits. This trend could very well continue. Iran's clerical elite has turned out to be extremely adept at changing its revolutionary rhetoric to accommodate shifting regional geopolitical currents, as it did during the political ferment that accompanied the "Arab Spring" more than a decade ago. Its regime has also deftly crafted both political and economic strategies (such as its idea of a "national resistance economy" in response to US sanctions) that have helped it to weather deeply adverse domestic conditions. But continued survival is not a given. History has shown that many authoritarian rulers and their regimes appear durable until the moment they are overthrown or collapse. This is precisely what happened to Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, and to Libya's strongman Muammar Qadhafi, who became a casualty of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Islamic Republic and its president, Ebrahim Raisi, could well follow the same trajectory because the country now faces a confluence of internal factors that could set it on a fundamentally different course in the years ahead.

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