As war rages in Israel and Ukraine, Iran is supplying both Hamas and Russia with weaponry, especially combat drones. And for decades now, it has armed Islamist militants across the Middle East that target American troops, including at least 45 service members injured by 38 drone attacks since Oct. 17.

If the United States wants to reestablish global security and end the conflicts in these regions, it will need to understand the military connections among adversaries and work to subvert them.

THE RED-GREEN ALLIANCE AGAINST THE WEST

In recent weeks, especially since Hamas launched its sickening assault on Israel, Iran has ramped up its public displays of affection toward Russia, inviting leaders from Moscow into the heart of the country. In September, for instance, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu traveled to Tehran to inspect production lines for unmanned aerial vehicles and declared that “Russian-Iranian interaction is reaching a new level.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently journeyed there to strengthen ties between the regimes. All this is happening, of course, while Vladimir Putin’s regime insists that Israel and the U.S. are really to blame for Hamas’s horrific attacks.

Despite these obviously growing ties between Iran, Hamas, and Russia, some in the U.S. media still refuse to see the link between the wars in Israel and Ukraine. They insist the Iranian regime’s deeply sectarian ideology has little appeal for anyone besides radicalized Shiite Muslims. Sunni extremists, such as the members of Hamas, certainly do not affirm the Shiite Iranian Revolution’s central theological tenets. And, to be sure, Putin has often positioned himself as a bulwark for Europe against Islamist threats. Somehow, though, these groups still find ways to work together.

What unites these incongruent powers is their abiding anti-American sentiment. Notwithstanding their apparent ideological differences, Iran, Hamas, and Russia all share a deep antipathy for the West in general and the U.S. specifically. Iran is essentially rallying the globe’s despots and tyrants around what Edmund Burke might have called an “armed doctrine” of anti-Americanism.

Western leaders would do well to imitate the moral clarity Edmund Burke possessed about the threats to his country’s security. In 1796, the Anglo-Irish statesman wrote a series of essays titled Letters on a Regicide Peace. He warned that a premature ceasefire with the revolutionary French Republic would be a disaster for Great Britain because the Jacobin revolutionists would nonetheless continue to work for the “subversion” of British power. In one of his most famous lines, Burke declared that it was not so much with a country but rather “it is with an armed doctrine that we are at war.”

Iran’s efforts to support both Hamas........

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