While Russia and China are ready to back protest-rocked Iran under threat by US President Donald Trump, that support would diminish in the face of US military action, experts told AFP.Iran is a significant ally to the two nuclear powers, providing drones to Russia and oil to China. But analysts told AFP the two superpowers would only offer diplomatic and economic aid to Tehran, to avoid a showdown with Washington.”China and Russia don’t want to go head-to-head with the US over Iran,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.Tehran, despite its best efforts over decades, has failed to establish a formal alliance with Moscow and Beijing, she noted.If the United States carried out strikes on Iran, “both the Chinese and the Russians will prioritise their bilateral relationship with Washington”, Geranmayeh said.China has to maintain a “delicate” rapprochement with the Trump administration, she argued, while Russia wants to keep the United States involved in talks on ending the war in Ukraine. “They both have much higher priorities than Iran.”- Ukraine before Iran -Despite their close ties, “Russia-Iranian treaties don’t include military support” — only political, diplomatic and economic aid, Russian analyst Sergei Markov told AFP.Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Moscow would do whatever it could “to keep the regime afloat”. But “Russia’s options are very limited,” he added.Faced with its own economic crisis, “Russia cannot become a giant market for Iranian products” nor can it provide “a lavish loan”, Gabuev said. Nikita Smagin, a specialist in Russia-Iran relations, said that in the event of US strikes, Russia could do “almost nothing”.”They don’t want to risk military confrontation with other great powers like the US — but at the same time, they’re ready to send weaponry to Iran,” he said. “Using Iran as a bargaining asset is a normal thing for Russia,” Smagin said of the longer-term strategy, at a time when Moscow is also negotiating with Washington on Ukraine.Markov agreed. “The Ukrainian crisis is much more important for Russia than the Iranian crisis,” he argued.- Chinese restraint -China is also ready to help Tehran “economically, technologically, militarily and politically” as it confronts non-military US actions such as trade pressure and cyberattacks, Hua Po, a Beijing-based independent political observer, told AFP.If the United States launched strikes, China “would strengthen its economic ties with Iran and help it militarise in order to contribute to bogging the United States down in a war in the Middle East,” he added.Until now, China has been cautious and expressed itself “with restraint”, weighing the stakes of oil and regional stability, said Iran-China relations researcher Theo Nencini of Sciences Po Grenoble. “China is benefiting from a weakened Iran, which allows it to secure low-cost oil… and to acquire a sizeable geopolitical partner,” he said. However, he added: “I find it hard to see them engaging in a showdown with the Americans over Iran.”Beijing would likely issue condemnations, but not retaliate, he said.Hua said the Iran crisis was unlikely to have an impact on China-US relations overall.”The Iranian question isn’t at the heart of relations between the two countries,” he argued.”Neither will sever ties with the other over Iran.” 

Gulf allies have convinced Donald Trump to “give Iran a chance”, a Saudi official said on Thursday, after the US leader repeatedly threatened strikes on the Islamic republic over a crackdown on protests that activists say has left thousands dead.Iran was shaken over the last week by some of the biggest anti-government protests in the history of the Islamic republic, although the demonstrations appear to have diminished over the last few days in the face of repression and an almost week-long internet blackout.The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said on Wednesday that Iranian security forces had killed at least 3,428 protesters, warning that the final toll would be far higher.Iranian authorities have lashed out at “rioters” who they claimed were backed by Israel and the US, vowing fast-track justice that activists fear will translate into a spree of executions.Trump has not ruled out new military action against the Islamic republic under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after Washington backed Israel in its June 12-day war against Iran.But with the belligerent rhetoric on all sides appearing to tone down for now, a senior Saudi official told AFP on Thursday that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman led efforts to talk Trump out of an attack on Iran, fearing “grave blowbacks in the region”.The Gulf trio “led a long, frantic, diplomatic last-minute effort to convince President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intention”, the official said on condition of anonymity.Some personnel were moved out of a major US military base in Qatar on Wednesday, and staff at US missions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were warned to exercise caution as fears mounted of a US attack.In telephone talks on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Saudi Arabian counterpart Faisal bin Farhan of the importance of “global condemnation of foreign interference in the internal affairs of regional countries” and vowed Iran would defend itself “against any foreign threat”, according to a statement on his Telegram account.On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia informed Iran it would not allow its airspace or territory to be used to attack the country, two sources close to the kingdom’s government told AFP.The developments came hours ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Iran later on Thursday, which was requested by the US.- ‘Good news’ -Up until Wednesday, the United States was threatening military action against Iran should it carry out the death penalty against people arrested over the protests.In an announcement at the White House, Trump said he had now received assurances from “very important sources on the other side” that executions would not go ahead.”They’ve said the killing has stopped and the executions won’t take place — there were supposed to be a lot of executions today and that the executions won’t take place — and we’re going to find out,” Trump said.Attention had focused on protester Erfan Soltani, 26, in prison in Karaj outside Tehran since his arrest, and rights groups said was due to be executed on Wednesday.On Thursday, the Iranian judiciary said Soltani has “not been sentenced to death” and was facing charges of propaganda against Iran’s Islamic system and acting against national security.If he is convicted, “the punishment, according to the law, will be imprisonment, as the death penalty does not exist for such charges”.In an interview with US network Fox News, Araghchi said there would be “no hanging today or tomorrow”.Commenting on Truth Social, Trump said: “This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!”- ‘Significant cost’ -Araghchi said the Iranian government was “in full control” and reported an atmosphere of calm after what he called three days of “terrorist operation”.The US-based Institute for the Study of War, which has monitored protest activity amid the shutdown, said it had recorded no protests on Wednesday.But it added: “The regime is sustaining repressive measures that impose a significant cost on the regime. This suggests that the regime does not perceive that the threat from protests has subsided.”Despite the shutdown, new videos from the height of the protests, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue south of Tehran, wrapped in black bags as distraught relatives searched for loved ones.One Red Crescent member of staff was killed and five other colleagues were wounded while on duty in northwestern Iran, the aid group’s parent organisation said Thursday without giving the circumstances surrounding their deaths.