Many Western accounts conflate Russian and Iranian support for the Assad regime as purposeful recalcitrance against US policy and interests. More nuanced analysis, however, reveals two agendas not really concerned with the United States: Russia’s support of Syria is motivated by global positioning, while Iran’s support is influenced by concerns for regional hegemony vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In both these scenarios, sentiment against US policy is not the engine driving Russian and Iranian strategies. This is indicative of a somewhat myopic Western tendency to lens the agendas of other states through their relative positioning with the United States. In this case, the habit undermines properly understanding two important players in the Syrian crisis and beyond in the Middle East region. The tendency to make itself the sun in a Copernican foreign policy universe handicaps the United States by impairing its diplomatic vision and retarding options for real interaction. This analysis dissects the Russian and Iranian positions from their own perspectives, highlighting the consequences they may have not only on the Assad regime into the future, but on relations between Iran, Russia, and the United States.