Eurasia Press & News
- Trump’s efforts to resolve the Ukraine war might restore Russia’s historic perception of its relations with Tehran as primarily transactional rather than strategic.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Iran last week did not reassure Iranian leaders that Moscow will help Iran withstand increasing pressure from the Trump administration.
- If U.S. ties to Russia continue to improve, Trump officials will look to their Russian counterparts for help in re-imposing strict limitations on Iran’s nuclear program.
- Iranian leaders are concerned that the U.S.-Russia rapprochement might pause, if not halt outright, Moscow’s willingness to deliver Iran advanced conventional weaponry.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago estranged Moscow from the United States and its European allies, Iran has counted on an expanding strategic partnership with Russia to insulate it from U.S. pressure, further spread Iranian influence in the Middle East, and receive needed advanced conventional weaponry. However, recent developments are likely to drive Moscow to return to its historic treatment of Iran as a subordinate, transactional partner rather than a strategic ally in Moscow’s quest to undermine U.S.-led global hegemony. In December, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s long-term ally, collapsed and was replaced by a Sunni Islamist regime politically close to Türkiye. Iranian and Russian forces, which had cooperated for more than a decade to keep Assad in power, were compelled to leave Syria with few prospects to return there in strength. In February, one month after Donald Trump began his second term as president, senior Russian and U.S. officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first high-level meeting since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The session resulted in an agreement to explore a settlement of the Ukraine war as well as to rebuild U.S.-Russia diplomatic, and potentially also economic, relations.
The sudden geopolitical changes confronted Tehran as it girded for Trump’s return to his economic sanctions-centric “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran. Iranian leaders have looked to their alliance with Russia – formalized in a 20-year “comprehensive strategic partnership treaty” signed three days before Trump’s second inauguration – to withstand Western economic pressure and help deter the U.S. and Israel from taking military action against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Tehran has also looked to Russia to help it redress its significant deficiency in advanced conventional arms, including by moving forward with the delivery of Su-35 fifth-generation combat aircraft. Iran’s ability to deter Israel or the U.S. also relies on Russia to replace or repair the S-300 air defense systems Moscow provided in 2016, units of which were rendered inoperable by an Israeli retaliatory attack in October.
However, Trump’s Ukraine policy – centered on re-engagement with President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government – has called into question the assurances Iran has relied on from Russia in recent years. Iranian strategists fear that, in an effort to achieve a lifting of sanctions and resume joint economic projects with the U.S., Moscow will, at best, de-emphasize its relations with Iran or, at worst, abandon Iran entirely. The Trump restoration of broad-based ties to Russia, if fully implemented, undermines Tehran’s leverage with its Russian partners by shifting Moscow’s incentive structure away from Iran, which is a relatively minor global player. Kremlin economists stress that restoring economic and business ties to the U.S. economy, including the lifting of U.S. and European sanctions, is crucial to reviving Russia’s war-stressed economy. Iran’s economy is only perhaps 2 percent the size of the U.S. economy, offering little to the Russian economy. Moreover, some Russian strategists assess that distancing Russia from Iran will achieve significant benefits for Russia’s key energy sector. Russia’s ties to Iran had already caused tensions in Russia’s relations with its main partners on global oil production decisions – the wealthy Arab monarchy states of the Persian Gulf. Additionally, Moscow has been reducing its dependence on Iran-supplied sophisticated armed drones by establishing their manufacture inside Russia itself.
Even as Moscow relished the prospect of rapprochement with Washington, one week after the February 18 U.S.-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began a one-day visit to Tehran to demonstrate that Moscow still values its relationship with Iran. However, judging from a wide range of press accounts of the Lavrov visit, it is not clear that Iranian leaders received the reassurances they sought. A February 25 Russian Foreign Ministry official statement on Lavrov’s meetings, which included elected President Masoud Pezeshkian but did not apparently include Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressed only generalities. The communication stated: “The comprehensive scope of the multifaceted Russian-Iranian relations, elevated to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership following the signing of a new framework interstate treaty in Moscow on January 17, was meticulously examined during [Lavrov’s meetings in Iran].” However, among other experts, Damon Golriz, a lecturer at the Hague University of Applied Sciences, told the U.S.-funded Persian language service Radio Farda that: “The aim of the (Lavrov) trip is to put pressure on Tehran to be in line with Moscow.”
The crux of the commentary in Iran’s official media, informed by Iranian leadership thinking, suggested Lavrov conveyed a significant message to Tehran, warning against shifting Iran’s nuclear doctrine (to try to produce an actual nuclear weapon) or withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran has threatened to withdraw from that treaty if the U.S. or Israel were to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. Reflecting the Russian view that a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran would be destabilizing and should be avoided, Lavrov urged Iranian leaders to enter into talks with the Trump administration to revive the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA). A resurrection of that accord would reimpose strict limits on Iranian production and stockpiling of enriched uranium and perhaps include new constraints on Iran’s missile forces and its support for regional armed factions.
If Lavrov’s messages to his Iranian counterparts were characterized accurately, they suggest that Russia, a party to the JCPOA, is willing to return to active participation in containing Iran’s nuclear work. Doing so would mark a reversal of Moscow’s more recent stance, in which its efforts to recruit Iran as a strategic ally caused Russian leaders to mute their criticism of Iran’s nuclear activities. Andrey Baklanov, a Middle East specialist who previously served as Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia and currently is a professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told Newsweek: “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.” However, Lavrov’s Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, suggested Tehran expects Russia to continue to help shield Iran from Western pressure on the nuclear issue, stating at the conclusion of the Lavrov visit: “Regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, we will move forward and coordinate our positions in cooperation with our friends in Russia and China.” Araghchi’s comments seemed to reflect his adherence to the prevailing view in Tehran, set by the Supreme Leader’s recent comments opposing negotiations with the Trump administration.
Russia’s return to the counter-proliferation fold would surely be welcomed by the Trump administration. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assesses Iran as within perhaps a week of producing enough fissile material for several nuclear weapons if there were a decision to enrich to the 90 percent purity needed for weapons-grade uranium. The most recent IAEA report on Iran’s program, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, reportedly states Iran is now producing enough 60 percent enriched uranium in one month, if enriched further, for one nuclear weapon.
Some experts and Iranian media forecast even more dire consequences for Iran from the U.S.-Russia rapprochement. Last week, Iran’s daily Jomhuri Eslami, which reflects the views of Iranian hardliners, warned of a “grand bargain” between Washington and Moscow that could result in Russia “turning a blind eye” to any potential U.S. military action against Iran. Javad Heirannia, Director of the Persian Gulf Studies at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told U.S. media that Moscow is unlikely to be “completely indifferent” to Trump’s calls for Russia to reduce its relations with Iran while Tehran’s leadership refuses talks with the U.S. He added: “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… 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. 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.” Still, the Islamic Republic has navigated through many periods of geopolitical turmoil, and Iranian leaders are likely to adjust to a new reality of a restored U.S.-Russia relationship if that restoration materializes.
