While joining the bloc has its upsides, it will be extremely difficult for Tehran to get full benefits from BRICS without the complete lifting of Western sanctions. Recently, Iran applied to join BRICS, a group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On a global level, this forum …

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi says that his country will not back down on its positions in the nuclear deal negotiations. In a Cabinet meeting today, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi discussed the ongoing deadlock with the United States over the nuclear negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known formally as …

In banning Russian coal imports from August onward, the European Union has finally broken the “energy taboo” that had beset its discussions of punitive sanctions against Russia for the war in Ukraine. Yet, the coal ban is not going to hit Russia’s economy very hard. With the clock now ticking …

European Union leaders agreed this week to a partial ban on Russian oil imports, overcoming a veto by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. But the agreement commits only to banning seaborne imports to the EU by the end of 2022, leaving Russian oil imported by pipeline untouched. Seaborne imports account …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bellicose speech yesterday, in which he announced that Russia had recognized the independence of two separatist regions of Ukraine and would deploy military forces there as “peacekeepers,” suggests that after months of military posturing and diplomacy, a full-scale invasion may well be at hand. But while …

When the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago, the European security architecture suddenly became uncertain, its future put in play. After all, much of the postwar balance of power in Europe—and the world—had rested on the icy pillars of the Cold War, pillars that in 1991 abruptly melted. It didn’t …

Not long after the commencement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I wrote that for China, binding itself tightly to Moscow would do harm to Beijing’s long-term interests. That is because, I wrote, an alliance between a superpower like China and a far less dynamic country like Russia, whose economy is …

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to draw outrage and reprisals from the international community, China is maintaining the cautious distance from Moscow it has taken since the onset of the crisis, with many observers suggesting that Beijing may have been caught unaware by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to …

As NATO has focused its attention on Russia’s offensive military capabilities in Eastern Europe, an equally significant and, in practice, more problematic issue has been largely ignored: Russia’s preponderance of “anti-access, area-denial” capabilities in the borderlands between the Baltic and Black Seas. Is NATO focusing on the wrong Russian threat …

In early March, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov embarked on a five-country tour of sub-Saharan Africa. During his trip, Lavrov signed new trade agreements with Russia’s two long-standing partners in southern Africa, Angola and Mozambique. He also strengthened Moscow’s diplomatic ties to Zimbabwe’s new government and highlighted the role Russia …