Richard Pollock argues over at his Substack that at least two aspects of the war in Iran are being underreported. One is the shredding of BRICS, the anti-Western coalition that started with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and then South Africa, before other countries joined the group albeit not the acronym. The other is Russian and Chinese efforts to resupply what’s left of the Iranian military (March 27, 2026).
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….
One reporter who has exposed the Russia-China rearmament is Adrian Blomfield, the Daily Telegraph’s senior foreign correspondent.
Pollock appears to treat a paraphrase of Blomfield as if it were a direct quote. So let’s go to the source. Commenting on the wreckage of an Iran-sent drone that struck Dubai, Blomfield says: “The markings on the fragment were not Persian but Cyrillic, an indication that drone warfare had gone full circle. The Shahed drone, developed by Iran but rendered deadlier and more sophisticated by Russia after four years of murderous testing in Ukrainian cities, had just been returned to sender….
“From the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, to Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Iran is using drone saturation tactics honed by Russia, deploying upgraded Shahed systems it originally supplied to Moscow and using Russian satellite intelligence and Chinese technology to guide its missiles to their targets.”
Pollock continues:
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.”
This rearmament of Iran “may have immensely backfired,” Pollock suggests, since so many of the later-joining BRICS countries are being bombed by Iran…with the help of founding members Russia and China. “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.” (Uh…destroyed their “trust”…in Iran? Maybe some of the leaders of some of these Middle Eastern states are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.)
Also from Blomfield and The Telegraph (March 20, 2026): “Ukrainians in disbelief over West’s failure to stop Iran’s deadly drones: Kyiv says it has the answer to Tehran’s cheap, deadly aerial threat.”
Last August, Washington reportedly passed up an offer to acquire Ukrainian technology that had repeatedly proved effective at intercepting Shahed drones—weapons Russia initially bought from Iran, reproduced and launched remorselessly at civilian and military targets across Ukraine.
Despite sitting through a Ukrainian PowerPoint presentation at the White House showing how such systems could protect US forces and allies in a Middle East war, the Trump administration reportedly dismissed the offer as self-promotion.
“We figured it was Zelensky being Zelensky,” one official told Axios.
The past fortnight, however, has prompted a rapid reassessment.
Live and learn.
