The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced the completion of the draft agreement on a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran. The document is scheduled to be signed at the BRICS summit in Kazan in October.
The decision to develop this strategic agreement was made after the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Moscow in January 2022, that is, before the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, before the «Al-Aqsa Flood» and the war in Gaza — in other words, before the world changed unrecognizably and irreversibly. Perhaps this is why it took so much time and effort to bring the plans for the Russian-Iranian strategic partnership into line with the new geopolitical shifts. Nevertheless, it seems that the main, fundamental contours of the relationship between Moscow and Tehran in the long term will be determined primarily by the constants of their national interests rather than by changes in the global balance of power. These changes are important because they require an update, a new clear articulation of the national interests of the two neighboring states, which, it seems, are far from identical.
What are we talking about?
For Russia, the absolute priority is to ensure that Iran does not become a source of threats to the south: in the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and Central Asia. This has been a constant of Russian policy since tsarist times. Today, it has acquired a new, broader meaning since Iran has become a missile-nuclear power. This means that the threats (or rather risks) associated with it now extend to Russian territory itself (the recent massive attack by Iranian missiles and drones on Israel confirms this).
In tsarist and Soviet times, the potential Iranian threat was mitigated by treaties granting Russia/USSR the right to deploy troops in northern Iran: the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, the Soviet-Iranian Treaty of Guarantee and Neutrality of 1927. During World War II, Soviet and British troops were stationed in Iran (in the north and south of the country, respectively) under the Soviet-British agreement of 1941. Tehran was forced to recognize the occupation a year later, and it wasn’t until 1946 that Soviet troops left northern Iran.
This period left a deep anti-Russian mark on the Iranian consciousness; to this day, many Iranians see our country as a potential aggressor. This factor (along with a number of purely military, technical and political reasons) makes it impossible to create a mechanism to guarantee against potential Iranian threats on the previous basis. Simply put, today Russia does not have the opportunity to occupy a part of Iran in order to ensure its security interests.
Does this mean that we are in danger of being defenseless against the risks emanating from Iran? Probably not. It is worth recalling that in 2015, in the midst of the war in Syria, ships of the Russian Caspian Flotilla launched cruise missile attacks on terrorist positions in the SAR. Russian «calibers» passed over Iranian territory. There is every reason to believe that the potential thus demonstrated was correctly assessed by Iranian strategists.
Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the Iranians’ enormous success in developing new types of missile and drone weapons. It is not enough to hope that Tehran will not use them against Russia’s interests. What is needed are clear, legally binding guarantees, necessarily backed by real threats of retaliation. We would like to believe that such guarantees will be included in the new strategic agreement.
The second priority for Russia in its relations with Iran seems to be guarantees that Moscow will not be drawn into potential Iranian military actions, whether they be confrontations or even wars with Israel, Arab countries, or Turkey. Such risks are real, as Tehran is actively playing on many fronts to create a new balance of power in the Greater Middle East. It should be noted that Iranian strategists have mastered the tactics of indirect actions, provocations, and the like, and may very well see Russia as a kind of «dagger» that can be used to threaten uncooperative partners-opponents.
It is obvious that it is absolutely unacceptable for Russia to be the subject of manipulation. However, we must not forget that interaction with Iran is one of the basic conditions for the effectiveness of our strategy in the Middle East in particular and on the global stage in general. This means that Moscow is very much interested in maintaining Tehran’s favor. If we think in terms of the global confrontation between Russia and the collective West or the United States, Iran appears to be a natural ally (and this image is carefully cultivated). However, it would be a mistake to assume that Iran’s current anti-Western stance is eternal and unchanging. Tehran acts solely in its own interests and can change the direction of its policy at any time if it sees fit. There is no doubt that the West would be more than willing to acquire a missile-nuclear Iran as an anti-Russian stronghold in the south.
So the conclusion is that Iran has a potentially effective lever of pressure on Russia — the threat of switching to the opposite camp. And this threat could very well be used to try to drag Moscow into some kind of military adventure.
The third priority for Russia seems to be access to the Indian Ocean (to the Gulf and the Arabian Sea), ideally with the establishment of military bases there (at least one). This task is partially solved: we are talking about the North-South transport corridor, which opens for Moscow the very «path to the warm seas» that the Anglo-Saxons have long and successfully prevented from being established (see the epic of the «Great Game»).
This corridor appears to be mutually beneficial. However, it is unlikely to provide Russia with an excuse and an opportunity to place its own security infrastructure on Iranian territory. Even the information about the cosmodrome near Chabahar, which is being built with the help of Russia, does not allow us to conclude that Iran is ready to provide its territory for Russian bases. After all, this would require a change in the constitution, and we have already seen how Tehran closed the Hamedan airfield to our air force. It is recalled that there was a loud outcry in Russia at that time. Of course, Russia could get control of Iran’s key dual-use airports and seaports, but it might not…
One more important detail should be pointed out, one that could complicate this issue: Russia’s position on the disputed islands in the Gulf. As is known, Iran and the UAE are in dispute over the ownership of three islands (Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunbs). Over the past year, Tehran has repeatedly expressed its displeasure with Moscow’s position, which essentially refrained from unequivocally recognizing Iranian ownership of the islands and, on the contrary, sided with the UAE on this issue. It would not be surprising if Iran were to put a blunt question to Russia and demand a clear position. In any case, it is hard to imagine that the Iranian authorities would agree to allow the stationing (in any form) of the armed forces of a state that does not recognize Iran’s territorial integrity (as the Iranians themselves understand it).
Finally, it should be noted that the Gulf and the development of relations with its Arab coast are a priority for Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Therefore, it is unlikely that Tehran will be willing to allow new external players into the region, especially since Iranian strategists have long insisted that the problems of the Gulf should be solved exclusively by the littoral states without any external interference.
From all this it is clear that a comprehensive strategic partnership between Russia and Iran is an extremely complex issue and is unlikely to be resolved on the basis of a single document, even a «big» one. Therefore, it is encouraging to see that the signing of such a document was preceded by a series of steps that created a fairly comprehensive and, hopefully, solid foundation: Iran became a member of the SCO (in 2023), the BRICS (from the beginning of 2024), and signed a free trade agreement with the EAEU. More recently, Russian-Iranian agreements on gas (designed for 30 years and capable of turning Iran into a gas hub) and currency agreements (allowing the integration of national payment systems and ensuring the liquidity of national currencies) have been concluded.
Thus, it can be argued that Russian-Iranian strategic cooperation already rests on a solid foundation and is largely guaranteed by mutually beneficial economic relations and multilateral agreements. It should be added that relations along the Moscow-Tehran line fit into the system of Beijing-Tehran relations (China and Iran have already signed a 25-year comprehensive cooperation agreement) and Moscow-Beijing: it should be recalled that the joint statement of the leaders of Russia and China of May 16, 2024 explicitly mentioned active cooperation «in the interests of strengthening security in the Persian Gulf region».
This allows us to be optimistic about the prospects for partnership with Iran. But much will depend on the stability of the Islamic Republic’s geopolitical strategy.