I'm John Batchel with Gordon Chang at Gordon G. Chang and Steve Gates of the Heritage Foundation.

A big picture in the front of Bloomberg's news, Steve, with the foreign minister who's not a

decision maker. He's a smiling face for Iran, arriving in Moscow being greeted officially

for meetings with Vladimir Putin. All right, the no-limits relationship that was announced

some years ago by a smiling Xi and a smiling Putin. How right, the No Limits relationship that was announced some years ago by a smiling

Xi and a smiling Putin. How's it going? Because Russia wants that price above 111 as long as possible.

And Beijing just wants oil. What's the relationship up to now? Well, first, Gordon and John,

I can't escape the opportunity to remind people that when

there's no limits partnership was being celebrated, they also had the very ghoulish, hot mic

moment of noting that if they harvest organs, they might keep themselves alive to be 150 or so.

They may have overestimated their physical life cycle, and they might have overestimated the life cycle of

this no limits partnership. And somewhat ironically, they're talking about this no limits. Well,

basically, they've discovered that there isn't a limit because there isn't that much of a

partnership other than sort of a marriage of convenience to fuel things that don't

sustain either country and are not meeting with strategic success in my estimation.

So what you when Iran is facing maximum power from the United States and real allies with real capabilities,

I would include Israel in that, but I'd also include the Gulf allies who have that massive

financial and diplomatic influence now. They're running into a situation where neither of them

has been able to do really very much to get the other partners in this devil's

triangle across a finish line. And so Iran faced with this is largely on its own. Diplomatically,

they can have a foreign minister come visit, but what is Putin really going to do to step deeper

into this loser of a circumstance?

...