Budding friendship

Russian President Vladimir Putin undertook a three-day visit to Iran in July for a tripartite summit with Iranian and Turkish leaders. Putin met his counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei and later Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

This visit was marked by bonhomie and promises of strategic cooperation between Iran and Russia. It signals a shift in their traditional approach towards each other. Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei warmly greeting President Putin and holding bilateral talks with his counterpart Ebrahim Raisi on regional and international security issues is a clear pointer towards an accelerating warming trend in their bilateral relations.

Putin’s visit to Tehran occurred at the end of President Joe Biden’s four day tour of the Middle East during which he visited Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and participated in the GCC summit meeting with leaders of Arab monarchies.

From Tehran’s perspective, Biden’s visit was an attempt to evolve a new anti-Iran regional consensus under Washington’s tutelage against Iranian nuclear ambitions and Tehran’s attempts to dominate the region. This regional consensus for the first time includes Israel along with leading Arab states. The joint statement issued at the end of Biden’s visit to Israel committed the two sides that they will work together “not to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons” which are deemed as a threat to regional and international peace.

Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries share this alarmist view. They have agreed to work together to evolve a regional anti-nuclear anti-missile umbrella aimed at the perceived missile threat from Iran.

To off-set these American and Arab moves, Tehran felt constrained to seek Moscow’s diplomatic and strategic support against this emerging anti-Iranian regional consensus. President Putin not only offered support for the Iranian nuclear programme, but also derided American efforts to contain Tehran.

As part of Iran’s “pivot to the east” policy, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remarked: “We must look to the East; looking to the West and Europe has no effect on us except procrastination and trouble. There are countries in the East that can help us; we can interact with them on an equal footing. We help them, they help us too.” There are media reports suggesting that Tehran is prepared to provide Moscow with “several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline for deployment in Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

On the critical issue of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ayatollah Al Khamenei endorsed the Russian position by observing that had Moscow not started the war in Ukraine, NATO, “the dangerous creature,” would have done it eventually. The spiritual leader further said: “the West is opposed to a strong and independent Russia… NATO would know no bounds if the way was open to it, and if it was not stopped in Ukraine, it would start the same war using Crimea as an excuse.”

During his meeting with Raisi, President Putin said: “I am very pleased to be on the hospitable Iranian soil…. We can boast about record figures in terms of trade growth. We are strengthening our cooperation on international security issues, making a significant contribution to the settlement of the Syrian conflict,”

Russia and Iran have also been expanding their cooperation in the economic sphere in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In July 2022, Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Governor Ali Saleh-Abadi travelled to Moscow. During his trip, Ali Saleh Abadi met with senior Russian officials including; Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, the country’s Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov and the governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Issues related to joint investment, enhancing monetary and banking cooperation and removal of barriers were the main focus areas of this trip.

In June 2022, both countries had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on road transportation at the end of the two countries’ Road Transportation Joint Committee meeting in Moscow in June.

Mohammad Reza Pour Ebrahimi, Chairman of Iran parliament’s Economic Commission, while commenting on Putin’s visit to Tehran, said that it would give a boost to economic cooperation between both countries. The Iranian lawmaker also said that sanctions imposed by Europe and the US on Russia had made cooperation between Russia and Iran more imperative.

Putin’s visit also coincided with the signing of a $40 billion energy cooperation agreement between the National Iranian Oil Company and Russia’s Gazprom under which Gazprom will help NIOC develop two gas fields and six oil fields, as well as taking part in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and construction of gas export pipelines.

There are many sceptics about the durability of this warming trend in relations between Moscow and Tehran. They point towards the “logic of competition” that undergirds their bilateral ties as energy suppliers that would, in their judgment, severely limit them to form a genuine strategic partnership. As pointed out by CIA director William Burns: “I think beneath the images that that we all saw, the reality is that Russians and Iranians need each other right now… Both federally sanctioned countries, both looking to break out of political isolation as well — but if they need each other, they don’t really trust each other, in the sense that they are energy rivals and historical competitors.”

Another constraining factor is the role of Islamic ideology in the Iranian world-view that would make them inherently distrustful of countries like Russia who have engaged in naked power politics to advance their interests. Notwithstanding these oil-based and ideological considerations, one can safely assume that as long as there is turbulence and instability in world politics and Iran remains the target of Western sanctions, it will remain willing to play the regional game of influence building with Moscow’s help.

Tehran is keen to get Russian diplomatic support to pressurize the United States to revive stalled talks on JCPOA.

Another dimension of Putin’s Tehran visit was the effort to iron out differences between Iran, Turkey and Russia regarding the situation in Syria. The joint statement issued at the end of the trilateral summit expressed their determination to continue working together to combat terrorism in all forms and manifestations, and emphasized the fact that the conflict in Syria had no military solution. All three Presidents emphasized their unwavering commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic as well as to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. They unanimously “highlighted that these principles should be universally respected and that no actions, no matter by whom they were undertaken should undermine them.”

A concrete outcome of this trilateral summit was the willingness of Moscow to allow the shipment of grain from Black Sea to the world at large to ease the supply of grain to world markets.

Overall, Putin’s visit to Iran may be described as an unqualified success as it has allowed Moscow to break the stranglehold of diplomatic isolation imposed on it by America and its European allies.

The writer is a political scientist and defence analyst