Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., discusses how escalating tensions in the Middle East are prompting fears of a wider war on ‘Special Report.’

In his remarks during last week's United Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, claimed that Iran wants to "live in peace." He demanded "a world free of nuclear weapons," and declared that Iran "is ready to disarm," if Israel does the same.

But just two weeks prior, Iran and its fellow dictatorship Russia were slapped with new economic sanctions by the Biden-Harris administration for Tehran’s delivery of ballistic missiles to Moscow. In fact, the national security community is increasingly concerned about the growing relations between two of America’s top adversaries. However, as Team Biden-Harris is hyper-focused on the threat this unholy alliance poses elsewhere in the world – Ukraine, the Middle East – what about us? Is anyone in charge of protecting our homeland?

As a former U.S. intelligence analyst who led Red Teams during war games, my team's job was to come up with, thinking like our adversaries, out-of-the-ordinary ideas – no matter how implausible – that Red Force (Russia, Iran, etc.) could use against Blue Force (U.S. and Allied militaries). The goal was to enable the president, the Pentagon and other decision makers to develop plans for countering our adversaries and protecting the homeland. Here are a few insights, from the intelligence perspective, that make the Iran-Russia threat even bigger than most Americans realize.

First, neither Russian nor Iranian leaders respect the Biden-Harris administration, making them more likely to act more aggressively against the United States. As a clear sign of indifference to Washington’s ire, two days after the new sanctions went into effect, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Ali Ahmadian, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. In it, he praised the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, for fostering "additional momentum" in Russian-Iranian relations and thanked Pezeshkian’s team for making the relationship a "priority." Five days later, Putin dispatched his top security official, Sergei Shoigu, to Tehran, where Shoigu held secret talks with Pezeshkian.

WHY RUSSIAN STATE MEDIA IS OBSESSING ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION AND PRAISING WALZ

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Oct. 16, 2007. (Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images)

Neither Russia nor Iran is afraid of economic sanctions. They’ve used loopholes in the sanctions regime to circumvent them and found alternative ways to finance their policy priorities and military programs. Despite the fact that the U.S., European Union (EU) and its Western allies banned nearly all Russian imports at........

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