President Donald Trump’s pivot toward improving ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised new questions about the future of Russia’s complex yet strategically important relationship with Iran, with whom Moscow just recently signed a historic treaty.
While renewed U.S.-Russia contacts have focused first and foremost on finding a settlement to the war in Ukraine, the White House has also tapped the Kremlin for its influential role in the Middle East, where Iran and Israel, a close U.S. ally, have engaged in direct hostilities over the war in Gaza. Russia was among the key parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement that Trump abandoned during his first term in office and Moscow has expressed willingness to explore a revival of diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
Trump has also proposed negotiations for a new deal that would allow Iran to “peacefully grow and prosper” and he has downplayed the likelihood of military action against its nuclear program. But the U.S. leader’s history of hostility toward the Islamic Republic and the return of his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions stoke uncertainty for Russia.
“Russia is ready to assist in solving the problem of Iran’s nuclear dossier, its relations with the United States and some of its neighbors in the region,” Andrey Baklanov, a Middle East specialist who previously served as Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia and is today a professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told Newsweek.
“However, to put it bluntly, we are still under the impression of American unilateral actions that destroyed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was developed at the cost of enormous efforts, including on the part of Russian diplomacy and the expert community,” Baklanov said. “After all, it was President Trump who on May 8, 2018, announced the country’s withdrawal from the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.”
For Russia, it’s a wait-and-see approach as to where Trump lands in his quest to recalibrate the U.S. approach to the region.
“The American president said that the United States had evidence that Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, but no evidence was provided,” Baklanov said. “Today, we are primarily interested in understanding the essence of President Trump’s new line, if it really differs from his previous course.”
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
No Guarantees
Iran and Russia finalized their 20-year “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” on January 17, just three days before Trump took office. The agreement had been in the works for years and marked the first major pact between the two nations since 2001, but it notably fell short of providing mutual security guarantees.
“These provisions are formulated very carefully and cautiously,” Baklanov said, highlighting the section of the agreement that states “If one of the Contracting Parties is subjected to aggression, the other Contracting Party should not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor that contributes to the continuation of aggression.”
Furthermore, Baklanov said, the agreement stipulates “that the parties will not allow the use of their territories to support separatist movements and other actions that threaten the stability and territorial integrity of the other party, etc.”
In this regard, the treaty differs from another landmark “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” that Russia signed with North Korea last June. That deal necessitates that each side would “provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay” in the event that the other was “put in a state of war by an armed invasion.”
“It seems that in today’s conditions, it is inappropriate to draw analogies with the development of bilateral relations with other countries, for example, North Korea,” Baklanov said. “Each case is highly individual due to the differences in the place of a country in the system of international and regional relations, not to mention the differences in the regimes of each side.”
“We see guarantees of security in the region not in strengthening military cooperation with a particular country or group of countries, but in creating a balanced regional collective security system with possible external sponsorship, for example, from Russia and the United States,” he added. “But this requires a transition to new, normal relations between Moscow and Washington.”
Iran and North Korea have both deepened military ties with Russia throughout the three-year war in Ukraine, which has received substantial support from NATO. Russian forces have made extensive use of drones bearing a striking resemblance to Iran’s Shahed line of loitering munitions, and instances of North Korean artillery and even troops on the battlefield in Ukraine have been presented by U.S. and South Korean intelligence.
While the means through which Moscow has reciprocated aid from Pyongyang remains less clear, despite widespread speculation, Russia has provided Iran with trainer aircraft and is reportedly set to sell advanced Sukhoi Su-35 multirole fighter jets. The long-awaited delivery could prove crucial for boosting Iran’s largely outdated aerial fleet at a time when Israel has openly threatened further strikes against the Islamic Republic.
But weapons shipments and the overall trajectory of Iran-Russia ties are at risk over disputes that have been brewing for years and have recently come to the forefront over another conflict.
Long before the war in Ukraine, Russia and Iran first demonstrated their capacity for military cooperation in Syria’s civil war that erupted in 2011. The two sides coordinated their aid for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against rebel and jihadi groups for more than a decade, but they also consistently vied for influence in Damascus, and operations in Ukraine ultimately took precedence for Russia.
To this day, many in Iran hold Russia responsible for allowing the Islamist-led offensive that toppled Assad’s longtime rule in December to succeed.
“Cooperation between Tehran and Moscow had led to keeping Bashar al-Assad in power,” Javad Heirannia, director of the Persian Gulf Studies at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Newsweek. “However, with the change in geopolitical conditions and the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, Russia approached Turkey and, without Iran, reached an agreement with Turkey on the deployment of Islamist forces supported by Ankara in western Idlib.”
He called it “the biggest blow to the Iranian-backed ‘axis of resistance,'” a coalition that has served as a core component of the Islamic Republic’s strategic depth and deterrence against Israel in the Middle East.
With Iran today feeling more exposed than ever after Assad’s downfall in Syria and the severe blows suffered by Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, Heirannia said that “even Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attributed the fall of Bashar al-Assad to Russia and criticized Russia for not allowing Iran to help the Bashar al-Assad regime.”
Pressure for Peace
Now, Heirannia said, Moscow is unlikely to be “completely indifferent” to Trump’s calls for Russia to reduce its relations with Iran while its leadership refuses talks with the U.S. under intensified sanctions. In fact, Russia appears to be pushing Iran toward diplomacy for fear of losing a key partner to a potential wider war that would plunge the region into even deeper chaos and further hamper Russian interests.
“Russia knows that the U.S. and Israeli military threat against Iran, if implemented, could weaken Iran, which is not in Russia’s interest,” Heirannia said. “On the other hand, any regime changes in Iran and the possibility of the formation of a regime close to the West would be completely contrary to Russia’s geopolitical and ideological interests.
“Therefore,” he said, “Russia is trying to force Iran to come to the negotiating table and prevent a war.”
The daylight between the two partners was made apparent by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s appeal for greater attention to diplomacy during his latest trip to Tehran on Tuesday. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had previously dismissed negotiations with the U.S. at this stage as “not rational, intelligent, or honorable.”
In another display of disagreement just one day before Lavrov’s visit, Iran opted to abstain rather than reject a U.N. General Assembly resolution branding Russia the aggressor of the war in Ukraine. Even the U.S. and Israel joined Russia, North Korea and others in voting against the measure.
This rare geopolitical climate may not bode well for Iran’s prospects of finally receiving state-of-the-art Russian weaponry.
“It does not seem that in the current situation, when Russia’s relationship with the U.S. is improving and tensions with Israel are likely to decrease, Moscow would want to strain these relations by sending advanced weapons to Iran,” Heirannia said. “Even in the midst of war between Iran and Israel and despite Iran’s military assistance to Russia, Moscow was unwilling to give Su-35 fighters to Iran.”
“It seems that the ‘Deep State’ in Iran has also become aware of the extent of Russia’s support,” he continued. “After all, since they have always called relations with Russia strategic, they talk less about Moscow’s indifference to Tehran. Given the current situation in Russian-American relations, it does not seem that Russia wants to give Iran weapons that will anger the United States and Israel.”
Moreover, he added, “such an action would also harm Russia’s relations with the Arabs of the Persian Gulf.”
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
A ‘Golden Age’
But Putin may ultimately find a way to play a constructive part in bringing nuclear talks back on track in light of the stark shift in U.S.-Russia relations.
Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst, described the current rapprochement between Trump and Putin as approaching a “New Détente,” one in which both sides are motivated to discuss a range of issues, including those pertaining to Iran.
“The Iranian nuclear one is important for both of them but in different ways: Russia is concerned about what the U.S. and Israel might do if Iran doesn’t agree to a new nuclear deal, which could destabilize Russia’s southern periphery, while the U.S. is concerned about Iran allegedly developing nukes,” Korybko told Newsweek. “If they reach a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, especially one that leads to strategic cooperation on resources like Arctic gas and rare earth minerals, then each would have an interest in helping the other on this.”
“To that end, Russia could share with Iran what it’s learned from engaging with Trump 2.0, namely his administration’s very different worldview when compared to his predecessor’s,” he added. “Given the trust between Russia and Iran at the national and leadership levels, coupled with what could by then be the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian issue that leads to a ‘New Détente’ between Russia and the U.S., Iran might very well be receptive to this.”
Also potentially playing a supportive role in setting the stage for U.S.-Iran talks is Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist who came to office last year on a platform of improving his country’s ailing economy. Khamenei, still skeptical of a new deal after Trump’s abrupt JCPOA exit seven years ago, wields the final say on such major foreign policy decisions, but Moscow’s position may prove useful as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi spoke Tuesday of ongoing consultations with China and Russia on the matter.
China, for its part, has proven the top contender to upending U.S.’ superpower status, owing to its economic growth, military might, diplomatic reach and technological prowess.
As with Iran, Trump has signaled a more pragmatic approach to the People’s Republic in his second administration. At the same time, he is poised to press for a more advantageous U.S. position in an expansive geopolitical competition that also bears consequences for Moscow, Tehran and many others.
“The more protracted that Sino-U.S. talks are, which could even descend into a global rivalry along the lines of the Soviet-U.S. one after World War II, the better it would be for Russia and Iran if they already reached their own deals with the U.S. since they could then balance between both camps,” Korybko said. “The same goes for India, which still counts China as its top trade partner in spite of their border dispute but is overall much closer with the U.S., and these three could cooperate to maximize their collective influence.”
India, Iran and Russia already cooperate to some extent on projects such as the International North-South Transit Corridor, an ambitious intercontinental rail route, and New Delhi has repeatedly defied Washington’s sanctions against both Moscow and Tehran. While India has opted to pursue closer ties with the U.S., the rising South Asian power has also shunned military alliances and has committed to a diverse set of regional and global relationships, particularly its longstanding partnership with Russia.
The result, Korybko argued, could be the emergence of a “new Non-Aligned Movement,” a reiteration of the now-120-member forum that opted not to take sides during the 20th-century Cold War. This “neo-NAM” could “help maintain the global balance of power and economic influence between those two superpowers,” he said.
“All the while, Russia, Iran, and India, as Chinese partners who by then would have also cut their own deals with the U.S. (India’s being focused on trade unlike the other two’s mostly geopolitical and resource deals), would be in a prime global position,” Korybko said. “This could, in turn, herald the Golden Age that Trump wants.”
