Putin Shrugs Off CIA Warning and Turns East: Xi, Iran and the Bet on American Exhaustion
Washington’s secret mission to Moscow carried two messages: negotiate before Russia’s position deteriorates — and do not mistake America’s Iran war for strategic weakness. Putin appears to be making the opposite calculation, turning to Xi Jinping, Masoud Pezeshkian and Narendra Modi to demonstrate that time and an increasingly multipolar world may be working in Moscow’s favour