Russian-Iranian Relations: A Watchful Partnership
/By Senior Research Associate, Scott Ferguson
The modern relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and The Russian Federation does not lend itself to a neat and singular interpretation. The prevailing sentiment is that Russia and Iran are walking together, though not in lock step, towards an anti-U.S. and Western future. There is quite a bit of evidence that supports this theory. Diplomatic, military and economic engagement between the two have been increasing in recent years. Mounting tensions between the U.S. and Iran during the Trump administration appeared to further catalyze this cooperative push. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has clearly stated, “In this critical situation, the relations between Iran and Russia are at their best and Iran’s will is to develop and deepen these relations.” In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed this sentiment while underscoring their geographic proximity stating, “These are relations between friendly and close countries that are neighbors in the Caspian Sea area.” Russian commentators have actively promulgated this narrative since the early 2000s.
Similarly, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently outlined his belief in the importance of close relations between Moscow and Tehran in a strategic letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hardliners within Iranian politics have hailed a pro-Asian, and in particular, a pro-Russian foreign policy as “the beginning of the post-American era.”
For its part, Russia has been willing to speak out in support of Iran. Top officials condemned the assassinations of Commander Qassem Soleimani and nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh; the superpower has also been a comparatively helpful voice in the UN Security Council for Iran.
However, beyond the rhetoric, the relationship can be viewed as strategic cooperation born of circumstance rather than mutual trust. The goal of this paper is to explore several key snapshots of that relationship and tease out where the limits of this partnership are, as the two nations increasingly engage with one another. This paper should not be viewed as an all-encompassing treatise on the subject, as numerous facets of the relationship are not addressed. Namely, Russo-Iranian relations in the sphere of Latin America and Africa have been omitted in the interest of some brevity. Instead, examples within the Middle East and Eurasia provide insights into a truly global network of collaboration and competition.
Media and Public Perceptions
On the ground, among the Iranian people, Russia appears to have a “good will” advantage over other countries. Recent polling by IranPoll, an independent research company based in Toronto, found that, “currently Russia is the only country viewed favorably by a clear majority of Iranians.” The February 2021 study saw 56% of respondents express a favorable view of Russia, with China following at 49%. This result of majority favorability has been consistent since 2016 whereas the Russian views fluctuate more. In 2013, a majority of Russians in a BBC poll voiced negative opinions towards Iran. Likewise, in a 2020 Levada poll, only 4% of responders named Iran as one of Russia’s closest allies and that same percentage even named Iran as one of the top five countries that is most hostile towards Russia. Some of the positivity towards Russia seen in Iran may stem from positive media coverage, which Russia has made some effort to influence. For over a decade, Moscow has invested quite a bit of capital into its own prime media outlets in the region: Sputnik News Service and RT Arabic. The rewards have been seen in generally positive news coverage within Iran, regarding Moscow’s policies in the region. This accounts for public perceptions, but does not address how the governing powers view the relationship.
From the top down, both Iran and Russia share an arguably expansionist foreign policy, often propelled by defensive rhetoric. Khamenei’s view of Iran as a “besieged fortress”, threatened by enemies in all directions is one that should resonate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A major aspect of Putin’s foreign policy has been the maintenance of a “buffer zone” of formerly Soviet states between the Russian homeland and potential outside threats. This approach has a degree of commonality with Khamenei’s use of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. .
Indeed, Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 marked a serious shift in the relationship. Gone, it seemed, were the days of sporadic ups and downs between the two as both leaders looked to each other as obvious sources of support in their respective battles to thwart U.S. hegemony and create a multi-polar world order.
Broadly speaking, the countries’ respective expansionist policies do not threaten the partnership. Nevertheless, further discussion on military cooperation and areas of contention are discussed in the sections below.
Historical Context
Russia and Iran are by no means drawn to each other by historical ties. While relations seemed relatively balanced prior to the 18th century, Russian moves to enlarge the empire under Peter the Great started the two on a path that would see an increasingly powerful Russia carving out Persian territories for itself. A series of Russo-Persian wars, the first of which actually saw Russia lose territory, would occur in the 18th and 19th century with Persia losing the Caucasus as the two empires competed for Caspian territories. Russians also opted to consistently belittle their Persian rivals for their perceived inferiority. Thus, the Persian empire entered the 20th century with distrust and resentment towards the Russian empire which, despite having been outnumbered in most of their military engagements, had repeatedly succeeded in gaining territory from the Shah and preceding Safavid and Qajar dynasties.
In 1935, Reza Shah further solidified the country’s anti-Anglo-Soviet stance. In a key symbolic move, Iran was officially adopted as the country’s name. The change is reported to have been championed by the ambassador to Germany at the time, and pays homage to the Aryan population as “Iran” is a cognate of “Aryan” while also demonstrating the birth of a new nation no longer subjected to the influence of Russia, or the equally mistrusted British Empire.
Prior to 1935, Russia had interfered internally in Persian affairs by supporting a secessionist movement in the northwestern territory, and had attempted to thwart the budding Constitutional Revolution in 1905.
The final example of Russian military intervention in Iran, and the one that remains freshest in Iranian statesmen minds today, was the joint Anglo-Russian occupation of the country beginning in 1941. The United Kingdom and Soviet Union saw a strategic need to gain control over northern Iran so as to allow for smooth supply lines in their war against Germany. Additionally, Iran’s increasingly public ties to Nazi Germany worried both nations. They invaded on August 25th and quickly overthrew the Reza Shah monarchy, opting to replace him with his 22-year old son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Soviet forces would not withdraw from Iranian soil until 1946, and then maintained a heavy presence in neighboring Azerbaijan.
For the next few decades Iran would be bogged down with more interference from Britain and then the U.S.. All the while, Soviet influence remained within its borders through budding communist movements that at times uplifted or clashed with the only remaining domestic source of political opposition to Pahlavi: Islam.
When the famous 1979 revolution finally usurped Pahlavi and saw Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rise to the position of Supreme Leader, relations with the powerful Soviet Union worsened again. According to Khomeini, the Soviet Union was “the Lesser Satan” and only surpassed in enmity to the newly-formed Islamic Republic by the United States. Throughout the ten-year reign of Khomeini, relations with Moscow remained poor.
Khomeini had built his uprising with ideals of revolutionary Islam that rejected Communism; as such he maintained non-alignment while Iran was beset by woes from both the east and the west, both fueled in part by the Soviets. To the west, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was receiving weapons from the Soviets that proved essential in its eight-year war with Iran. Meanwhile, to the east the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was spurring a refugee crisis that saw roughly 2 million Afghan refugees flee to Iran. This created a huge strain on Iran’s economy all while the government navigated a war and life under harsh sanctions imposed by the U.S. as Iran had been labeled a state sponsor of terror.
This is an incredibly brief look into the history between these two nations. However, it does help to explain the mistrust and cautiousness, particularly on the side of Iranians, when dealing with Russia in the 21st century. The Iranian government has a long memory, and it does not approach its counterparts in Moscow with naivete. A thawing of relations between Tehran and Moscow was unrealistic until several of the aforementioned barriers were removed. Specifically, the end of Iran’s war with Iraq, the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and death of Khomeini in the same year, and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, all cleared the way for the two nations to ease into strategic partnership.
Military Cooperation and Disagreements
On a macro-scale, Russo-Iranian military cooperation is on the rise. While the details of this partnership will be explored below, there has been a notable increase in forward-facing displays and military exercises. In February 2021, they participated in joint naval drills in the Arabian Sea and northern Indian Ocean. The two have held previous joint exercises with China in the Gulf of Oman with top Iranian flotilla admiral Gholamreza Tahani proclaiming, “the message of this exercise is peace, friendship and lasting security through cooperation and unity.” The 2019 exercises did represent an important step forward in military cooperation as they marked the very first joint naval exercises between Russia and Iran outside of the Caspian Sea.
Russia and China have been somewhat muted in their saber rattling related to these exercises. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated that Moscow’s cooperation focuses on, “preparing for naval antiterrorist and anti-pirate exercises,” in a bid to keep the drills from being viewed as a purely anti-Western alignment. Iran meanwhile, has savored the opportunity to demonstrate these as a diplomatic win (in that it is not the pariah state former President Trump hoped to make it at the time), and as proof of the Iranian navy’s might despite Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” sanctions campaign.
On Moscow’s end, Sergei Lavrov has stated that this cooperation focuses on, “preparing for naval antiterrorist and anti-pirate exercises,” in a bid to keep the drills from being viewed as a purely anti-Western alignment.
Arms Sales
Beyond forward-facing naval displays, on a more granular level, Tehran is heavily reliant on the Russian military industrial complex. Russia has been its major provider of weapons systems for decades. As early as the 1980s, the Soviet Union was supplying Tehran with a vast array of military hardware. While Iran’s military expenditure lags behind its richer gulf rivals of Qatar, the UAE and principally Saudi Arabia, it still accounts for nearly three percent of the GDP with the vast majority coming from Russian state-owned companies like Almaz-Antey, the United Aircraft Corporation and KRET, a subsidiary of Rostec. As Russian state-owned corporations like these are under western sanctions, Iran has proven a consistent customer, especially as sanctions against its own government and military intensify.
Dating back to the early 2000s, Tehran was purchasing weapons from Belarus, Ukraine, North Korea, China and other nations. By 2010, China had overtaken Russia as the dominant weapons exporter, though the reimposition of sanctions in 2014 saw Russia return to 96 percent of Iranian imports for the next four years.
One of the sales that gained considerable notoriety was the 2016 delivery of the long-awaited S-300 defense systems. These Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM) significantly augmented Tehran’s defensive range and the ability to threaten U.S. and Israeli air operations in the Middle East. The S-300 delivery received particular attention because it is comparable in efficacy to the U.S.-made Patriot system. According to the American Enterprise Institute, “the S-300 can be used against fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, short- and possibly medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and air-launched standoff weapons.” In short, it was a welcome upgrade for Iran’s defensive capabilities as it faces superior air forces from all its major competitors.
Russia had been deterred from delivering them by Israel and the U.S. for the preceding six years. The reason for U.S. opposition to this exchange was the sheer advantage these defense systems provide. At the time, the S-300 was considered to be one of the best SAM systems in the world.
The more impressive iterations, the S-400 and S-500 A2/AD have been withheld from Iran, but as a negotiating chip, it still benefits both Moscow and the IRGC to have the older variations as the entire SAM family of defense systems was designed for compatibility between newer and older models. Therefore, the IRGC has the immediate benefit of the truly incredible defensive capabilities of the S-300 system, and the potential to quickly integrate newer systems into their defense network should Moscow choose to provide them.
It bears mentioning that while Russian air defense systems are Iran’s best options for as long as the U.S. Patriot SAM system is off-limits, Tehran is working to break this dependency and made serious progress in 2019. On August 22nd 2019, the government revealed its own air defense system named Bavar-373. While there is debate over whether this air defense system is an original design or simply an S-300 copycat, it undeniably assists Iran in its mission to deploy more SAM systems across its spheres of influence and lessens its reliance on Moscow for military hardware. Again, this demonstrates the necessity that has driven Iran to Russia for military equipment, not necessarily an ideological affinity.
Looking past air defense, Iran has regularly sought out a comprehensive laundry list of Russian military hardware. The more noteworthy items being the Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet, and the T-90MS main battle tank.
Both iterations of advanced Russian tech were witnessed by the Iranian military in Syria, doubtlessly fueling this desire. A further deal looked possible with Russia willing to sell the T-90 to Iran in 2016, but Tehran ultimately backed out of the deal claiming their own military industrial complex could produce sufficient battle tanks. As for the fighter jets, Iran continued to express an interest into 2020 as it seeks to improve its aerial capabilities. As Israel continues to improve its own air force, this has become more imperative as the two rivals compete throughout the region.
Israel’s recent acquisition of F-35 stealth fighters further pushes Tehran to catch up in the Middle Eastern arms race. The F-35 is one of the most advanced iterations of stealth technology in the region, and could produce substantial tactical advantages for the Israeli air force. Reports even claimed that Israel flew two of the jets on a test mission over Tehran without the Iranian air force or the IRGC knowing. While these reports were never confirmed by Israel, the immediate firing of Iran’s Air Force Chief by Khamenei suggests the gravity with which Iran views its air defense capacities. However, the Iranians do not have the financial capabilities to purchase some of the more advanced weaponry, nor is Moscow willing to sell it to them for fear of irrevocably damaging relations with Israel and the Gulf states.
Russian weapons sales do not put the IRGC on par militarily with the might of its gulf competitors or Israel, nor are they meant to. They give it enough clout to defend its own territory, though both Khamenei and top IRGC generals have consistently explained that defense of the Islamic Republic must come from beyond its borders to ensure the safety of its citizens. This has primarily manifested in a regional campaign to create a land bridge stretching from Tehran to Beirut, and it is within this zone that modern Moscow and Tehran have seen their first real military cooperation.
Syria
Many experts point to Syria as the birthplace of Russo-Iranian practical military cooperation. The Russian military and the IRGC have been bound together in Syria, both by a desire to prop up the Assad regime, combat mutual regional competitors like Turkey and the US, and weaken neighboring nations with the resultant chaos.
However, as the war winds down, it has become increasingly evident that their long term goals in Syria are not perfectly aligned. Iran has invested far more than Russia has in the war. It spent over seven years building up militia forces tied to the IRGC in the hopes that these groups might become ingrained in the Syrian military and political apparatus in a similar strategy to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is at odds with Russia’s hopes of playing kingmaker in diplomatic discussions. Russia is not quite the diplomatic pariah that Iran is and Putin’s calls with Erdogan, Trump, Assad, and even Netanyahu have the Iranian regime concerned that a deal to resolve the war could be cut out above their heads. Recent discussions in Doha, Qatar materialized those fears as Iranian officials were not present in the discussions on a Syrian solution. Taking place in March, 2021 the “Doha Process” contrasts the preceding Astana Process that included Turkey, Iran and Russia. The negotiations in Kazakhstan gave Iran a much-desired seat at the table, and though Iranian diplomats have remained quiet on the new Doha Process, the implication that they could be on the outside looking in does not bode well for future Russo-Iranian cooperation.
Russia’s perceived coziness to these competitors risks the IRGC’s investment in Syria, and by extension, its long term goals of forming a land corridor to the Mediterranean of countries heavily influenced by IRGC-backed militias. The Quds force, the IRGC’s powerful foreign affairs division, has largely achieved this mission in Iraq and Lebanon, but its hold on Syria is in jeopardy if Assad falls, negotiates a regime change, or the militia are disbanded/destroyed. Moscow, in turn, could seize upon an opportunity to boost its international stature as a top diplomatic power, both in the region, and globally. Currently, negotiations between Ankara and Moscow demonstrate Russia’s success in growing its Middle Eastern influence.
Russia’s entry into the war was also to protect its own valuable assets within Syria as it has two military facilities within Syria giving it access to the Mediterranean Sea. The Basel al-Assad airbase and the Tartus naval facility are the only foreign bases Moscow has outside of the former Soviet Union. The Tartus facility is of special import, providing a launching point for Moscow to maintain a toehold in the Mediterranean.
The Syrian conflict, often lauded as the first point of institutional military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow, can be better understood as an example of how the two regimes have been forced together by strategic necessity rather than shared ideological or long term geopolitical goals.
Prosecuting the War in Syria
Russia’s intervention is still largely credited with having saved the Assad regime. From the conflict, the Russian military has been able to indoctrinate a new generation of its own military strategists in executing proxy wars. Ground troops, the air force and large contingencies of the private military company Wagner were deployed in an effective manner that helped to break apart the ISIS caliphate.
Today, the country has been divided into four main spheres of influence. The majority of larger cities like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo are under the Assad government’s control. Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control the resource-rich northeast, and are backed by the U.S., though this backing has seen severe fluctuations allowing for a greater Russian presence in the region. Additionally, there are zones within the northwest that in practice fall to Turkish decision-making, and the final zone is the province of Idlib. While Idlib is controlled by the jihadist alliance Hayat Tashir al-Sham (HTS), there is a large Turkish force within the province. Today, Idlib is seen as the last rebel stronghold in a war that is grinding into a semi-frozen conflict.
This conflict has been a key example of the complexity of Russo-Iranian cooperation. Their joint involvement in the decade-long war has put on sharp display both the potential, and true limits of their partnership. While the IRGC and Russian military have both provided support to maintain Bashar al-Assad’s regime, ostensibly fighting on the same side, their long term goals in Syria have divergence points that become increasingly visible as the conflict decreases in volatility.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif stressed in a leaked audio tape that the IRGC’s Quds Force has been Iran’s tightest link to the Russian military in Syria. The audio revealed quite intricate levels of collaboration between Moscow and the Quds Force, but highlighted yet again, cooperation built upon personal relationships rather than institutional ones between the whole of the Iranian government and the Russian Federation.
The Limits of Strategic Cooperation
Iran has been involved in the Syrian conflict, arguably since its inception. In 2000, when Bashar al-Assad came to power, Hezbollah and Iranian leadership provided him advice and guidance.. When the Syrian people revolted against Assadin 2011, the IRGC took on an increasingly central role in defending what it sees as a necessary partner.
The Quds Force, formerly led by General Commander Qassem Soleimani, became the primary advisors and organizers for pro-Assad foreign forces within Syria. Iran was able to prop up the regime by supplying and financing majority-Shiite foreign fighters primarily hailing from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Lebanon. Despite this assistance, it is Russia’s official entry into the war in 2015 that is often pointed to as the reason for Assad’s survival.
Moscow’s strategic logic for joining the war in many ways coincided with Tehran’s. Both governments feared that regional security would be threatened by the fall of Assad to extremist Sunni forces. From the onset, they understood the civil war as a regional issue. Russian first Deputy Defense Minister Valery Gerasimov has been quoted stating, “ISIS would have continued to gather momentum and would have spread to adjacent countries. We would have had to confront that force on our own territory. They would be operating in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Volga region.” Having previously fought two wars to wipe out Islamic rebellion within its own borders, Moscow was clearly motivated by what it saw as an anti-terrorism strategy. Here, Tehran’s goals matched up rather nicely. Khamenei’s oft-repeated aspiration to fight Sunni extremism outside of Iran’s borders to ensure that Iranians are not subjected to this type of conflict at home, followed the same broad principles of buttressing President Assad against separatist Sunni forces.
On an international scale, Moscow saw the prevention of Assad’s fall as a national security imperative. President Vladimir Putin has frequently criticized Western campaigns to oust leaders within the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region as he fears the same actions occurring within Russia, former Soviet states, or both. Russian dissension and experience with NATO’s ouster of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya helped inform the Kremlin’s decision to intervene in Syria and prevent Bashar al-Assad suffering a similar fate. Yet again, Iranian goals synchronize through overall distaste for U.S. influence in the region and historically-guided fears of Western-backed regime changes in their own country. These fears date back to the 1953 coups backed by MI6 and the CIA that eventually succeeded in removing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh from power. The subsequent re-installation of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power, and his often-brutal autocratic tendencies have been blamed for the 1979 revolution that created the Islamic Republic of Iran the world knows today.
Syria also holds geo-strategic importance to both Russia and Iran. It is an integral part of the IRGC’s hopes of maintaining a land bridge stretching to the Mediterranean Sea, and as such can be seen as an integral part of Iran’s larger plans to gain strong militaristic and political footholds in the neighborhood. Similarly, Russia has looked to Syria as a reliable access point to the Mediterranean and its ability to project influence into the region dating back to the Cold War. At the center of that, has been the Assad regime under Hafez al-Assad and now his son.
Here, there is some divergence between Tehran and Moscow as the IRGC has sacrificed far more to boost its ties to militia and paramilitary forces. Through its more insular role in Syrian proxy forces, the IRGC has managed to diversify its stake holdings in the political future of Syria in a manner that may free it from total reliance on the Assad regime. The same cannot be said for Russian ground-level influence. This is not to say that Russia has not invested financial, tactical and troop assistance to its own cadre of proxy forces; rather, Iran’s soft power is simply more pronounced within Syria.
Still, the extent of the IRGC’s influence is nonetheless being questioned today as Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani’s replacement as commander of the elite Quds Force, is said to lack the expertise and prestige that his predecessor held over the region. The debate over the future of the IRGC after Soleimani’s death continues with some proclaiming him an irreplaceable shadow commander whose assassination will bring about the end of the IRGC’s regional influence.
Plenty of media outlets argue that his influence was massively overstated, though the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. Ghaani admittedly does not speak Arabic like his predecessor, and has much more experience in the Southern Caucasus and in nations to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. He lacks the military and diplomatic influence that Soleimani held in the Middle East, and Khamenei’s hasty move to appoint him despite reports of President Rouhani’s objections suggest a degree of distress. The regime needs to maintain an image of the IRGC as a regional power with institutional connections abroad rather than connections built purely upon interpersonal relationships. Regardless, at a critical point where Iranian-backed proxies must jockey with the Russians for the future of Syria, the loss of such an influential commander further tilts the scales in Moscow's favor.
Syria’s Tomorrow and the New Power Brokers
Currently, tensions between Iran and Russia center around their divergent views of what a post-conflict Syria should look like.
While Moscow hopes to rebuild a stronger, reformed Syrian army, Tehran is much more interested in duplicating its modus operandi of maintaining bonds with powerful militia’s within Syria’s borders. Just as Hezbollah and the Hashd al-Shaabi provide future influence for the IRGC in their respective countries, so too do the Local Defense Forces (LDF) and smaller Shia militias seek this in Syria.
The changed landscape of control within Syria in 2021 has only further strained the surrounding geopolitics. Today, Turkey and Russia are the chief power brokers, to Iran’s exclusion.. The deadliest fighting is currently taking place in the northwest province of Idlib. As the last standing rebel stronghold in the country, the province bordering Turkey has seen regular airstrikes and direct engagements in violation of several attempted ceasefires. While Idlib has witnessed particularly bloody combat, it has not deterred Moscow and Ankara from preserving diplomatic venues as they pursue their own objectives. Meanwhile, Tehran has been increasingly sidelined as Moscow and Ankara negotiate in what has been dubbed a “marriage of convenience”. While the two governments act as rivals in theaters beyond the MENA region, they have acted in concert here and repeatedly left Tehran out of conflict resolution.
Despite Iran’s very real concern over the outcome of the recent 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia has asserted itself as the primary diplomatic force in the region and chose to work with Ankara despite calls from Iran’s foreign minister to include all interested parties. Similarly in Syria, Putin demonstrates a willingness to carve out spheres of cooperation with his competitor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to ensure Russia’s continued ability to act as a key negotiator and kingmaker, even to the detriment of Tehran’s goals in Syria.
Both the Kremlin and the IRGC felt compelled to enter the Syrian conflict for similar reasons. They worked together to achieve similar goals, and the Russian air force’s contributions in saving the Assad regime from collapse to the Islamic State cannot be ignored. However, as the conflict enters its twilight stage, it becomes clear that Russo-Iranian cooperation in the Syrian theater will continue to take a back seat to Russian interests of maintaining its status as a top power broker, especially after losing some of that status to Turkey in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Quds Force is unlikely to lose its foothold in Syria due to its diversification of influence, but Iran’s positioning as a junior partner does no favors to its relationship with Russia.
Iraq
Moving east, Iran and Russia’s interests in Iraq are less aligned, but their relationship within the country is arguably more harmonious as they appear to stay out of each other’s way.
As in Syria, the Quds Force has built up an impressive network of militias like the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. These militia groups are part of a larger Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) umbrella organization, or Hashd al-Shaabi, that is ostensibly controlled by Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.
In truth, the Quds Force has been able to increase its own influence in Iraq through the PMU, though the level of that influence is still hotly debated. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s highest Shia cleric, also holds sway over some of the groups making up the larger PMU. As is the case with the IRGC’s backing of Lebanese Hezbollah and the multitude of proxy forces in Syria, influence in Iran’s western neighbor allows them to further solidify a land bridge from Beirut to Tehran, and fulfill the IRGC’s founding goals of guarding Shia Islam throughout the world. More broadly, the potential to see the government in Baghdad as an ally rather than a foe harkens back to Iran’s hopes of creating meaningful ties between the two countries. Additionally, as Baghdad pivots towards Tehran, Khamenei inches closer to bringing about the expulsion of U.S. soldiers so close to Tehran’s borders.
Moscow’s interests in Iraq however, center on the country’s energy sector and combatting U.S. influence. For years, Russian oil companies have invested in Iraq to maintain a footprint in such a prominent oil and gas giant in the region. As of 2020, Russian energy investments in Iraq totalled $10 billion, with companies like Lukoil, Bashneft and Gazprom holding key oil and gas assets within the country. Another $20 billion in hydrocarbon investments has been teased at by Russian officials. Additionally, Moscow seeks to insert itself where a weakening U.S. role seems to be leaving a window. Here, Putin and Khamenei can synchronize as both have inroads with Shia militia and prefer to offset the United States.
However, the Kremlin’s calculations in Iraq are different in terms of drawing too much backlash from the U.S. military. The prospect of Iraq coming back into strategic focus for the U.S. would risk Russia losing much of its influence within the country. Many analysts have pointed out that in the MENA region, it hasn’t so much been genius on the part of Russia that has allowed it to increase its presence, but rather the often-times rapid disengagement of the United States that provides a vacuum.
Within Iraq Putin must play a nuanced game of staying out of the IRGC’s way, while also ensuring the country remains on a path of alienation from the United States.
To that end, Russia has managed to steadily improve relations with the PMU, as the organization’s some 70 groups are not technically U.S. enemies in the theater of Iraq. Rather, their objective is theoretically aligned with U.S. forces: the complete defeat of ISIL forces.
It’s well-evidenced that as long as Iran’s tactics do not interfere with Russian strategy, Putin will reciprocate. This has been even better illustrated in Yemen, discussed below.
A Balancing Act in Yemen
The conflict in Yemen illustrates how Russia’s lack of engagement has bolstered Russo-Iranian relations. Seven years have passed since Riyadh launched a direct military offensive to restore Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power in Sana’a. The latest iteration of conflict has spawned what many decry as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It implicates the U.S. through the supply of weaponry and Gulf states through the contribution of thousands of troops, the majority of which are provided by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Unlike several other conflicts in the MENA region, Russia has maintained a careful distance here, aiming not to anger Saudi Arabia and its allies or Iran. While Houthi rebel delegations have been received in Moscow, the general stance of the Kremlin in the latest period of the Yemeni civil war has been a flexible balancing act. For over three years, Russia has provided limited financial support to the Hadi government in Aden while publicly condemning Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabian oil fields and Riyadh. When it comes to disrupting Iranian interests in the conflict, Russia seems unwilling to make that leap. In 2018, Russia vetoed a UNSC resolution condemning Iran for providing the Houthi rebels with weapons in violation of an arms embargo. Moscow has an interest in maintaining friendly ties to the government in Yemen, and demonstrates greater trust in the Hadi government in Aden than in the rebels based in Sana’a.
The Kremlin has long term goals of establishing a naval base in the Red Sea, though the death of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh seemed to put the plan on further hold. Following Saleh’s death, Iran and Russia temporarily seemed at odds over how to handle the Houthis, but the two nations have maintained an open dialogue on the crisis and have since been closer in lock step towards Iran’s strategic objectives in Yemen.
Iran’s strategic goals harken back to competition with Saudi Arabia and the financial/diplomatic drain the conflict inflicts on its gulf rival. Iran has brokered discussions between the Houthis and several European nations, but requires prolonged rebel power in the country if it hopes to keep Saudi Arabia backed into a corner. Unlike the situation in Syria, Iran has managed to preserve its seat at the negotiating table, thus ensuring multiple venues of influence in Yemen’s future.
The Houthis have of course looked for broader international support, namely from Russia. Nevertheless, despite their attempts to foster stronger ties with Moscow, they have not secured formal relations. Russia has received Houthi delegations and maintains that a peaceful resolution to the Yemeni conflict will require Houthi inclusion, but seems bent on holding the organization at arms length.
For now, Moscow’s peripheral involvement appears to cause no quarrel with Tehran as the Iranians continue to utilize the conflict as a pressure point in a larger regional competition with Saudi Arabia.
Afghanistan
A final point of military cooperation between the two powers lies to Iran’s east. Within Afghanistan, as with other countries in the region, Iran and Russia are mutually benefitting from rather inconsistent and flighty U.S. policy. They’ve both had chaotic relations with the Taliban, and the IRGC’s more recent inroads through the Fatemiyoun Brigade hint at another opportunity for Tehran to stake its claim on a neighbor’s future through Shia militia forces.
Previously, the two nations have been at odds with one another in Afghanistan. The 1979 Russian invasion produced swarms of refugees fleeing west into Iran, though the majority fled to Pakistan. Iranians remain wary in their cooperation with Russia in part due to this rocky history.
The ethnic component of the war in Afghanistan has been especially troubling for Tehran. Conflicts in general along Iran’s eastern borders breed anxiety within the Iranian political establishment as the country’s largest minority ethnicities are concentrated along the corners of its borders. Just as large Azeri, Kurdish and Arab populations are viewed as potential threats to domestic stability in the western parts of Iran, so are the Turkmen and Baloch minorities in the east.
The Balochis are predominantly Sunni Muslims occupying a region that spans Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is within this context that Afghanistan can be understood as a key pressure point in the Russo-Iranian relationship.
Each of the aforementioned ethnic minorities suffers a second-class citizen role within Iran, especially in politics. Tehran is constantly at risk from secessionist movements gaining momentum, especially among the Baloch people. Due to a host of calamities endured by the Baloch minority, including social and economic discrimination, violent secession is often stoked by surrounding conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thus, turmoil in Afghanistan escalates the risk of further secessionist movements in Balochistan as populations are displaced. This risk led to the IRGC collaborating with Russians against the Taliban and later, at times fighting on the same side as the U.S. and NATO forces.
Today, with the U.S. perpetually keeping one foot out the door in Afghanistan, Russians and Iranians are ramping up their own engagement, and this time with better coordination. A joint desire to curtail terrorism, narco-trafficking and total Taliban rule has reshaped their mutual efforts in Afghanistan.
The IRGC’s most promising investment in the country remains the Fatemiyoun Brigade or, Liwa-e-Fatemiyoun. The Shia militia has already been active in Syria and Afghanistan for years and according to Tolo News, “is primarily composed of second-generation Afghan refugees living in Iran.” The brigade is also, “the largest force of non-Arab foreign fighters for an Iranian cause in the Middle East,” and Javad Zarif has repeatedly offered their services to the Afghan government. Their track record is impressive, not only in supporting Assad in Syria, but also in Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Now, as the predominantly ethnic Hazara division returns from Syria to an Afghanistan still embroiled in a largely ethnic conflict that saw their own people massacred, they present a useful fallback option for Tehran if the Taliban should become too powerful.
The Russian military on the other hand, has its own plans for the fighters. Russian special forces and Wagner troops gained contact with the Fatemiyoun Brigade through the Syrian conflict. While the IRGC often used them as “cannon fodder” against Israeli and ISIS forces, providing no more than a month of training and inconsistent wages to boot, the Russians were supplying them with T-90 tanks. Much as the Wagner Group provides Moscow with battle-hardened operatives under a cloak of deniability, the Fatemiyoun helped boost their interests in Syria. The paramilitary force could potentially do the same in Afghanistan with the continued provision of military tech and logistical support.
Russia’s ability to entice the Fatemiyoun was already shown in the 2017 operation to retake Palmyra from ISIS. The two actors joined forces in an operation to retake the historic city from ISIS control. With Russian training and air support, the brigade was no longer so dependent on the IRGC’s Quds Force and achieved a crucial PR victory in the war.
This race to retake Palmyra was one of the more blatant displays of competition and fragility in the IRGC-Russian alliance. Similarly, the Fatemiyoun unit of Hadrat Faisal Al-Abbas’ decision to switch to Russian training and coordination severed illusions that the Shia militia was wholly under the IRGC’s control.
Now, as these young fighters return to Afghanistan, Tehran and Moscow must share influence over them as Iran seeks to recreate its Lebanese strategy and Russia seeks to protect its political and economic interests in Afghanistan.
The Fatemiyoun Brigade is just one inflection point in Moscow and Tehran’s vision for Afghanistan’s future. Their chief goal of superseding U.S. influence and maintaining their stabilization efforts in the region keep them aligned, but on a micro-level, the brigade reveals fissures in that binding. Iran seeks influence in the country’s political future on par with its hold over Iraq. Afghanistan is an important piece in Iran’s larger competition with Pakistan and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Nevertheless, Russia has worked actively to cultivate its own influence in its former neighbor and will look to compel Tehran to share or cede negotiating power in an Afghanistan with a diminished U.S. presence.
What Russia hopes to gain from this increased influence is largely in line with its desires throughout Central Asia: the eradication of ISIS. A fear that Islamic extremists will gain power and spread into Russian territory is a defining aspect of Putin’s foreign policy. Moscow’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, best summarized this saying, “ISIS clearly has stated the goal of spreading its influence beyond Afghanistan…. This presents a serious threat first of all to the Central Asian countries and the southern regions of Russia.”
Central Asia and the Caucasus
The Russian outlook on Afghanistan spreads further into greater Central Asia and the Caucasus as well. Stabilization agendas, and campaigns against drug trafficking and terrorism bind them together in a similar fashion. Throughout the region, Iran remains a necessary partner.
Speaking on the potential partnerships and rifts between Moscow and Tehran, Russian foreign policy expert Alexei Arbatov noted that the overall opinion of Russia’s political elite has not soured on Iran. He asserted that, “Russia does not view Iran as a potential enemy. Iran is a major consumer of Russian arms, an extremely important Russian geopolitical partner, as well as a growing “regional superpower” that balances out the US military and political presence in the Black Sea/Caspian region and Middle East, while simultaneously containing Sunni extremism in the North Caucasus and Central Asia.”
To that end, Tehran has a long track record of respecting Moscow’s wishes in the region. Nicole Grajewski, writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, stated, “Tehran has ceded to Russia’s interests in the conflicts in nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has considered Iran as a stabilizing force and a bulwark against U.S. influence.” This military deference to Russia has assisted Iran in maintaining relatively friendly ties with former Soviet states in the region.
Ultimately, friendlier relations within the region have manifested in Iran’s inclusion in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an observer state, steady diplomatic efforts to resolve issues with Turkey rather than direct military confrontation and a willingness on Moscow’s part to sell Iran weapons even at the risk of drawing international condemnation. The latter has been especially important because Moscow recognizes that some semblance of a partnership must always be maintained with Tehran if they want the Iranians to continue recognizing Russia as the senior partner in the region. While that aspiration is becoming increasingly lofty as Iranian markets pivot towards Beijing, Russia’s privileged hold over the Caspian Sea and oversized diplomatic sway can and should keep this Eurasian partnership afloat for the foreseeable future. In this domain military cooperation is progressively taking a back seat to economic attachment.
Economic Cooperation and Disagreements
Looking at the economic relationship between Iran and Russia in recent years, it’s easy to see a trend towards harmony. This belies the overall volatility both nations have experienced, and the necessity, not trust, that has produced that trend.
The story of Russo-Iranian economic ties is one of ebbs and flows, built far more on short-term transactional gains than on lasting cooperation. With current moves to boost integration in the Caspian region, the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and plans to have Iran join the Moscow-led European Economic Union (EEU), it is easy to become swept up in the narrative both sides have been pushing that they are strong economic partners. This however, is a gross overstatement of their historical and present ties. Moreover, this interpretation lends itself to a more exaggerated view in Western observers of the potential for future economic harmony between Russia and Iran.
Just as their military-technical cooperation brings baggage, so too does the economic relationship. Disagreements on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea, the nearly-two decade wait for Russia to complete the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and a consistent unwillingness on Moscow’s part to risk squandering its ties to the U.S. by helping the Iranians are just a few points of mistrust that Iranians carry with them in dealings with Russia.
The Long Road to Cohesion
Since 1998, bilateral trade between the two has moved in sporadic dips and surges that in no way indicate the consistency of Russia’s more critical trade partnerships with countries like China, the Netherlands and Germany. While economic ties between them have improved in recent years, a 2019 paper co-authored by Jahangir Karami, Ehsan Rasoulinezhad and Shahab Alddin Shokri points out that there are still serious internal and external factors holding these nations back from increased economic cooperation. According to the authors, “banking and monetary issues, transportation, high tariff customs and export licenses are the major structural barriers in the economic relations of the two countries.” In addition, Moscow must play its own balancing act of integrating with Iran without completely torpedoing its relations with the West. It must do all this while at the same time trying to supplant Tehran as a key oil exporter in Central Asia.
All these barriers help to explain their relatively low volume of trade even within the last five years. According to the Iran-Russia Economic Database, “Iran was Russia’s 50th largest trading partner in 2018 (down from 48th in 2017), accounting for 0.25% of Russia’s total trade.” Most of the bilateral trade is made up of a flow of food products and agricultural raw materials, but this does not imply that recent developments in their growing economic partnership should be ignored as pure fanfare. Rather, the reality of external forces constraining said growth must be carried into each reading of the more bombastic headlines promising, “The alliance of Iran, China, and Russia is the formation of a ‘new maritime power triangle’.”
An excellent example of those lofty goals being confronted by reality is in the aforementioned North-South Transport Corridor. The joint project between India, Iran and Russia has been lauded as the key to giving landlocked Central Asian nations access to greater trade in the region. The INSTC’s potential economic and geopolitical ramifications have enjoyed years of debate. On the higher end, it is seen as a venture that, “ would be able to replace Egypt’s Suez Canal in terms of overall efficiency.” On the opposite side, experts point to the fact that the plan has been in the works since the early 2000s and has been consistently bogged down by insufficient investment, regional instabilities and complex geography that hinders new infrastructure. The corridor is meant to stretch from St. Petersburg to Mumbai in a distance of 7,200 km. The sizable investment Russia has made in the project is part of a larger move to boost its own footprint in the Persian Gulf and South Asian Markets.
This has mixed implications for Iran as it has received infrastructure assistance and investment augmenting its own energy industry. Russia has provided oil platforms for Iran’s delineated section of the Caspian Sea that allow it to extract oil from deeper levels than it previously had the capacity to reach. Similarly, an oil-for-goods program set up in 2014 helped Iran continue to export oil despite sweeping U.S. sanctions.
Ali Akbar Velayati, one of Khamenei’s top foreign policy advisors, has worked extensively with his counterparts in Moscow over the years in boosting Russian investment in Iranian oil and gas. However, this also comes with some negative impact due to ceding too much market control to Russia. Moscow’s desire to usurp Iran as a key energy provider in the region adds to the strain on their energy cooperation and helps to explain Tehran’s reluctance to work bilaterally with Moscow on these issues.
Bonded by External Forces
Some of the reluctance to work together on energy dissipated considerably following recent developments in the Caspian region. As Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan set aside old disputes, and move forward on the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, Russia has seized at the opportunity to work with Iran and India with more consistency. The Trans-Caspian Pipeline presents a serious threat to Russian influence on European energy markets and has revitalized Russo-Iranian talks on the INSTC as a means to compete with Azeri-Turkmen cooperation. Previously, Russia enjoyed oversized influence in the Caspian Sea, and an emboldened Azerbaijan and Turkey are looking to increase their own stake in European energy. Because the Trans-Caspian Pipeline will strengthen both parties, as well as Turkey’s energy goals, direct sabotage from either Russia orIran appears unlikely. Instead, these external forces yet again force them to mitigate their own distrust and improve their partnership.
Additionally, Iran’s highly-public desire to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) can be seen as the two laying the groundwork for a more institutional partnership, in lieu of one that fluctuates under the prevailing winds of the day. The bloc includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, and would provide Iran with a more diverse range of options when it comes to trade. Moscow has voiced its own interest in this accession, tipping off debate over the possible ramifications of allowing the first non-post-Soviet country into the “Greater Eurasian Partnership”.
For Moscow, the move would provide a significant geopolitical boon. According to the Jamestown Foundation, long-lasting cooperation could produce, “a blocking move against Turkey and the West, an expansion of Russian influence southward to India and the Middle East, and even Russia’s acquisition of something it has long wanted, a warm-water port to the south.”
While Iran’s accession to the EEU has yet to be inked, a mutual desire for greater trade cohesion makes it seem likely in the near future. Thus, Iran will further release itself from what it sees as western-imposed economic confinement, and Russia will be given a tighter grip over the region’s energy markets. The two would become economically intertwined while allowing Moscow to maintain its trade surplus with Iran, and keep its junior partner heavily reliant on oil exports. While this prospect is not ideal for Tehran, its current relationship with the U.S. necessitates it.
Washington, the JCPOA and a Conservative Tehran
When Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, there was understandable hope that the U.S. and Iran were on the path of reconciliation.
Buoyed by a predominantly young and far less anti-western Iranian population than in previous decades, Former U.S. President Obama bet on an eventual rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. His calculation was that with the release of economic sanctions, diplomatic guidance, and a population increasingly disillusioned with hardliners’s anti-western positions, in time the two countries could move closer together. While this could have been problematic for Moscow, that approach ended with Former President Trump, and many believe the opportunity may be lost for good. With hardline conservatives gaining near total control of the Majlis (parliament) in Iran’s February 2020 elections, and a similar shift predicted for the June 2021 Presidential Election, the bus may have already left the station.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for his part, has drawn a firm line in the sand stating that Washington must be the first to act in dropping Trump-era sanctions before negotiations and compliance can be expected from Iran. Thus, the ruling conservatives in Iran drift further away from Washington as both sides express distrust in one another.
There are obvious benefits for Russia in worsening relations between the United States and Iran. On a broad geopolitical level, Iran’s adversarial stance towards U.S. allies in the region ensures a level of instability that drives foreign investors away from companies like Saudi Aramco, and towards Russian gas giants like Gazprom, Novatek and Rosneft. As Russia’s economy relies heavily on oil and gas, there is a vested interest in diminishing Middle Eastern competitors through conflict. Whereas Washington, Tehran and even Beijing would all likely be weakened by an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran, Moscow would likely see a boost in oil export revenue and its international status as a mediator . Audio recordings of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif leaked in April, 2021 confirm that Moscow had serious apprehensions about the JCPOA and a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. In these tapes Zarif accused Former Commander Soleimani of working with Moscow, “to sabotage the nuclear deal.” However, Soleimani’s meeting was with Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s Minister of Defense, suggesting that discussions of the JCPOA were likely not the primary purpose of the visit.
Publicly however, Russia has been supportive of the U.S. and Iran re-entering the JCPOA. Russia, of course, was one of the key forces in negotiating the deal leading up to its 2015 signing. This was perhaps motivated by the fact that Moscow could just as easily find benefits in strengthened ties between the U.S. and Iran. A direct conflict between the two would certainly result in an increased U.S. presence in the region, which in turn could jeopardize the many inroads Moscow has made in the MENA region over the past few years. Oftentimes, burgeoning Russian influence in Syria, Iraq and other MENA countries have been attributed not so much to adept uses of soft and hard power on Moscow’s part, but rather to the fact that the U.S. appeared to be deserting the region on multiple fronts.
Putin also wants a seat at the table for renewed JCPOA negotiations. These two paradoxical views can be held simultaneously because Russia does emerge with notable gains, regardless of the outcome. Should the JCPOA remain a deal of the past, Russia can expect gains in its energy sector. In contrast, if the Biden team can reach a deal with their Iranian counterparts, Russia has certainly secured a place in the formulation of that agreement. This would serve to improve Russia’s status as a global diplomatic power. As Moscow seeks to grow its diplomatic influence in the MENA region, positioning itself as a key interlocutor in the JCPOA’s revival would be a welcome diplomatic triumph.
Between Moscow and Beijing
While Russia can glean profit from disarray in the Middle East, China sees instability as a threat to its own energy security. Since Iran has the fourth largest proven oil reserves in the world, it is of great importance to Chinese energy needs, and in recent years the two countries have moved closer to one another.
An Iranian pivot towards Beijing gained public momentum in 2019 with the drafting of the famous $400 billion 25-year investment pact between the two. That deal, signed on March 26, 2021, should not be read as a complete shift towards China. Notably, no text yet released by either party has given an official number in terms of investment. Similarly, defense and economic commitments so far revealed were either pre-existing, or ill-defined. With relations between Washington and Tehran at their lowest in years, and Moscow simply lacking the economic power to provide the level of assistance the Iranian economy requires, it was postulated that China would become the preferred strategic partner of Iran. Very little is known about the pact, but it is rumored to focus the majority of funds on developing Iranian oil, gas and petrochemical industries. Its recent signing has revitalized speculation as to the scope of investments it will bring. The move sparked concern in western media as it appeared China was stepping in to replace the role of Europe, the U.S. and Russia as the Russian economy battled economic sanctions of its own.
In reality, this shift already took place in 2018. When Former President Trump announced the U.S.’s withdrawal from the JCPOA on May 8th, 2018 he gave EU countries a choice: drop investments in Iran or risk incurring U.S. ire. While France, Germany and Britain voiced a desire to maintain these economic ties, Iran was ultimately left as a pariah state once again, and saw a precipitous drop to 2014-levels of production. While Iran still manages to smuggle some of its oil outside of its borders, legal output flattened. With the JCPOA withdrawal creating an economic vacuum, Beijing rushed to fill it and secure a greater hold on Middle Eastern oil, led by the ‘Big Three Chinese oil producers: China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), PetroChina and Sinopec. Beijing looks to the Middle East for energy security, and Iran is one piece in a much larger chessboard of China’s increasing presence in the region. The investments, however, have gone far beyond energy infrastructure. This is often illustrated by the fact that Iranian buyers will often ask if a product is “of high quality or if it is Chinese.” While the public demonstrates a preference for European products and markets, Chinese businesses have succeeded in flooding bazaars with cheaper goods, and simultaneously positioning themselves as the wallet for Tehran.
These developments have led many to conclude that Tehran has chosen Beijing over Washington and Moscow. In reality, there are still spheres in which Russia holds the upper hand over Chinese influence. Namely, military and diplomatic power. China’s ability to extend its influence through geoeconomic tools like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) make it another pole to contend with in the Middle East, but Russia’s involvement in conflicts, and subsequently conflict resolutions throughout the region has allowed it to maintain its role as kingmaker and a diplomatic powerhouse within the MENA region. Iran remains an example of this as it has historically been Russia’s third-largest buyer of weapons, after China and India. This remains the case despite clear limitations on Moscow’s willingness to provide Tehran with its best defense systems.
For the foreseeable future, Tehran seems trapped in economic reliance on China, but cannot choose outright between Moscow and Beijing. It must maintain a working relationship with both despite their often-opposing strategic goals for the region. As the 21st century doles out new challenges for Tehran to face, that opaque balancing act must persist.
The Coronavirus and Vaccine Diplomacy
Perhaps the greatest current challenge for Tehran, COVID-19, has beleaguered an already floundering economy and population. Iran has been wounded by the coronavirus pandemic more than any of its surrounding neighbors. It leads the Middle East in deaths, and initiated its emergency, country-wide vaccination campaign in February with Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.
Responding to the crisis, Tehran has worked with Moscow to secure a total of five million doses despite an internal debate within Iran over the efficacy of the vaccine. Following the publication of a study by the medical journal The Lancet, which found the vaccine, “showed a good safety profile and induced strong humoral and cellular immune responses,” the vaccine has been picking up increased recognition. This, despite its rushed and censored production has led many countries around the world requesting shipments of the vaccine.
Despite the accolade of being 91.6 percent effective against COVID-19, many Iranian medical experts have accused President Rouhani of prioritizing diplomatic ties with Russia over public health. The social media movement behind #BuyVaccines has further demonstrated a fracture between those in Iran with misgivings about prioritizing Sputnik V, and those who distrust the Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer vaccines. There were obvious political motivations in Khamenei’s decision to receive the Sputnik V as the first foreign vaccine admitted into Iran just one month after banning any vaccines from the US or the U.K. While Iran is also receiving vaccines from China, Cuba and the global COVAX project, Moscow has secured an undeniable soft power victory in Tehran’s choice to import the Sputnik V vaccine first, and to lay plans for its domestic production at Iranian pharmaceutical facilities.
According to polling, the major loser in public opinion during the pandemic has been China, which saw a serious drop in favorability during 2020 amongst Iranians polled, but this appears to be slowly climbing back in recent months towards 50%.
Cyber Warfare
In addition to vaccine cooperation, Iran and Russia have been making recent moves to bolster their cooperation within the cyber sphere. It is a domain where both enjoy outsized capabilities.
Both Tehran and Moscow can be understood as geopolitical guerrillas. Lacking the economic power of most of their adversaries, and the military capabilities of a few, they are forced to employ cheaper, asymmetrical and more risk-averse strategies to achieve their strategic goals. Cyber warfare has become an important part of both nations’ foreign policy tool kits, both offensively and defensively. The relative lack of international cooperation, and rules to the road within the cybersphere make it in many ways an ideal battleground for both nations.
Tehran’s push to improve its own cyber capabilities came not from an offensive need, but a defensive one laid bare by the 2010 Stuxnet Incident. This was a revolutionary virus attack that woke Tehran to the vulnerabilities of its domestic infrastructure to direct attacks. The computer worm succeeded in infiltrating roughly 15 Iranian facilities, including the famous Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility, and dealing significant damage to Iran’s enrichment process. The Stuxnet attack was a joint operation between U.S. and Israeli intelligence forces as a result of collaboration under Operation Olympic Games.
At the time, Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, feared Tehran was inching too close to nuclear weapon capabilities, and sought to wreak havoc on the Natanz facility. The operation was largely a tactical success, but is considered a pivotal moment in Tehran’s awakening to the necessity to bolster its own capabilities in the cyber realm.
This incident, and a later malware attack on Iran’s Oil Ministry and National Oil Company, have been pointed to as motivation and preparation for the 2012 Shamoon attack for which Iran has widely been blamed. The attack was the largest cyber assault on a company in history, targeting Saudi Aramco, while also crippling Qatar’s RasGas Company.
As a result of the attack, 85% of Saudi Aramco’s IT systems were rendered useless and the resultant panic has been credited with awakening Saudi Arabia to the need for enhanced cybersecurity. While Tehran has never claimed responsibility for the initial or subsequent Shamoon attacks, security experts point to it as the most-likely culprit. The IRGC has famously claimed its own cyber command division is the fourth-largest in the world. Whether or not Tehran was behind these attacks, Operation Olympic Games undoubtedly kickstarted the cyber arms race in which Iran seems to increasingly turn to Russia for assistance.
The Kremlin, in contrast, has seen the engagement of non-military measures as critical to its overall strategy for far longer and views information warfare as an adaptation of previous strategies. In 2000, the Ministry of Defense released the statement, “In the conditions of the information warfare, adopting strategies to protect information resources will allow avoiding the disorientation of military command structures, C2 [command and control] disruption, irreparable destruction of logistic and transport infrastructure elements, psychological dislocation of personnel and non-combatants in a war zone.” The statement went on to clarify the dire need for information security capabilities both as a weapon and a shield for the Russian state.
Both Iran and Russia have seen increased cybersphere engagement with the U.S. in recent years. This has gone well beyond hacking infrastructure and financial systems to the point where disinformation campaigns are carried out across the world at a relatively cheap price compared to kinetic warfare. What remains undisputed is that Moscow is the superior actor in this realm between the two, and arguably the world.
The Russian cyber attack in March of 2020 was proof of the Kremlin’s current ability to utilize hacking, despite the fact that it often favors lower sophistication psychological campaigns. The attack on the U.S. government affected the Pentagon, NSA, DHS, the Treasury Department, NTIA, and several other organizations. While attacks of this magnitude serve Tehran’s long term interests in weakening U.S. intelligence, Russian intelligence has also demonstrated a willingness to manipulate Iranian organizations as proxies for short term gains. In 2019, the Iran-based hacking organization “OilRig'' was hacked by Russia’s Turla as part of a larger campaign involving mostly Middle Eastern countries. Turla gained access to OilRig’s tools and then turned them against the U.S. and the U.K. while posing as the Iranian hackers.
This is not to say that Tehran and Moscow have a malicious relationship within the cyber sphere. Both nations are brought together by mutual enmity towards U.S. intelligence, their top cyber threat. Their recent agreement on cyber cooperation demonstrates a new willingness to operate in a more synchronized manner in the cyber realm. However, as with their military objectives, there are serious rifts between their objectives and of course a limited degree of trust between the two.
Most recently, this rift was demonstrated in each country’s attempts to sway results in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Recently published reports demonstrate that Iran looked to damage Trump’s chances as well as general confidence in U.S. democracy. While Tehran did not attempt to directly promote President Biden, it was revealed that, Khamenei authorized, “a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects.”
Moscow, in contrast, worked to undermine Biden’s chances while engaging in promotion of Trump’s reelection. These diverging goals likely informed the decision to keep their January cyber cooperation agreement focused primarily on the exchange of defensive capabilities. This is of vital importance to Iran as its own cyber defense capabilities are woefully outmatched by most of the world’s cyber powers. With Russian assistance, Iran could not only better prepare itself against future foreign attacks, it could also disseminate this technology and expertise to its many proxies throughout the Middle East, and better counter Saudi Arabian hackers and Israeli Intelligence.
To say that Russia meddled in the U.S. 2020 election solely to boost Trump’s chances of winning however, is misleading. Trump’s victory was a short term goal at odds with Tehran’s immediate interests but the long term goals of the two countries’ disinformation campaigns is more unified: the weakening of U.S. democracy through the exacerbation of existing social, economic and political fissures within U.S. society. In this sense, Russo-Iranian cyber collaboration has a positive future.
Despite this potential, the recent agreement signed by Foreign Ministers Javad Zarif and Sergei Lavrov should not be read as a demonstration of holistic cooperation. In reality, the deal seems to further demonstrate the limits in trust between the two governments. Moscow showed it was willing to push for a U.S. candidate who authorized the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, an act Lavrov has publicly condemned. The Kremlin attempted to weaken Biden’s chances of winning even if it meant risking Iran’s own security through Trump’s ratcheting up of U.S.-Iranian hostilities. Yet, Tehran cannot hope to shore up its own defenses alone. Nor can it afford to lose out on the opportunity for more collaboration regarding offensive capabilities with the world’s pioneer in information warfare.
Looking Ahead
Today’s Russo-Iranian partnership is one of contradictions and mixed advances. Within the Middle East, they have struck a balance of cooperation and competition that allows both parties to advance their foothold in the region. Within the South Caucasus and Caspian region they are putting aside historical disagreements to stabilize their mutual spheres of influence, and their economic ties appear to be strengthening in a more durable manner than in previous decades.
Yet, within each cooperative achievement, contradictory strains and push factors exist that beg the question, what is this partnership built upon? In truth, there is not yet a single partnership. Rather, their relationship is a collection of ad-hoc advances and pitfalls, often amplified by opposition to Washington. This network of kaleidoscopic agreements habitually appears to be a single, unified alliance from the outside. In truth, despite a clear trend towards convergence, unified alliance between the two countries is yet to be manifested.
