When Russia enlisted the aid of China, North Korea and Iran in its war against Ukraine, some U.S. and British officials began talking about a new “axis.”

It appeared that the four countries were united by anger, authoritarianism and animus against the United States and its allies.

But Iran’s sales of drones and ballistic missiles to Russia for its war and oil shipped to China did not pay off when it mattered, raising doubts about unity among the nations.

None of the other three states rushed to aid Iran during its war with Israel or when U.S. forces bombed Iranian nuclear sites. China and Russia, by far the two most powerful countries among the four, issued pro forma denunciations of the American actions but did not lift a finger to materially help Iran.

“The reality of this conflict turned out to be that Russia and China didn’t run to Iran’s rescue,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “That just exposes the limitations of the whole ‘axis’ idea.”

“Each of them is pretty selfish and doesn’t want to get embroiled in the wars of others,” he added. “These are very different wars and different sets of conflicts. The countries are not necessarily sharing the same structures and values and institutional links the same way the U.S. and its allies do.”

The four nations all have autocratic systems and harbor hostility toward the United States, which traditionally has aimed to weaken them and challenge their legitimacy. The countries also have some strategic ties and have undermined U.S.-led economic sanctions by doing commerce and sharing weapons technology with one another.

“Yes, there is probably a very modest amount of coordination among China, North Korea, Iran and Russia — in the sense that they talk with each other and have some of the same frustrations with the United States or with the West,” said Michael Kimmage, a history professor at Catholic University of America and former State Department official who has written a book on the war in Ukraine.

“But it’s not particularly meaningful,” he added.

Among the nations, only Russia and North Korea have a mutual defense treaty. Besides providing weapons to Russia, North Korea has sent more than 14,000 troops to fight alongside the Russians against Ukrainian forces.

Their bond is rooted in a shared communist past and the anti-American war on the Korean Peninsula from 1950 to 1953, in which Mao Zedong’s China also took part.

That history also accounts for the close ties between China and Russia, one of the most consequential bilateral relationships for the U.S. government and much of the world. The leaders of the two nations have forged a personal bond over many years, and their governments announced that they had a “no limits” partnership just weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

China still sees value in abiding by some of the international norms promoted by a pre-Trump America and democratic nations, and it has refrained from sending substantial arms aid to Russia during the war. But it has helped to rebuild Russia’s defense industrial base, U.S. officials said, and it continues to be one of the biggest buyers of Russian oil.

Russia and Iran have never had that type of relationship.

One issue is religion. Iran is a theocracy with the type of ruling body that the other three secular, traditionally socialist nations regard with suspicion. Both Russia and China view the spread of Islamic fundamentalism with alarm. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has taken extreme measures against even moderate Muslims, suppressing some Islamic practices among ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs in his country’s northwest.

“There are no shared values beyond vague platitudes about the ‘multipolar world order,’ and there are quite a few contradictions,” said Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian at Johns Hopkins University. “Putin indicated what they are: His relationships with Iran’s neighbors, including Israel and the Arab states, are too important to sacrifice on the altar of Russian-Iranian friendship.”

“He is a cynical manipulator interested only in his strategic interests, and if this means throwing Iran under the bus, then he is prepared to do this,” Radchenko added. “To be sure, the feeling is fully reciprocated in Tehran.”