Thread by @farangissbayat

کاش رسانه‌ها خانم طباطبایی را می‌آوردند تا برایمان از جنبه‌های استراتژیک تقابل ایران با غرب و چرایی درهم تنیده شدن روابط ایران با چین و روسیه می‌گفتند.

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.