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Iran and Russia have agreed to closer military cooperation and intelligence sharing in a sign of how much their rivalry with the West has brought them closer together.
President Vladimir Putin and President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a far-reaching “comprehensive strategic partnership agreement” in Moscow on Friday.
The long-anticipated partnership, which had been a source of anxiety in the West, fell short of the promise of mutual military assistance that President Vladimir Putin signed with North Korea in June.
However, Russia and Iran pledged to cooperate against common military threats and not to use one territory to attack the other. They will also plan joint drills and drills, exchange information among security agencies, and work together to defeat sanctions.
President Putin hailed the deal with Iran as a “real breakthrough” that creates “conditions for the stable and sustainable development of Russia, Iran and the entire region.”
He highlighted trade and economic benefits, including Russia’s sale of civilian nuclear technology to Iran and a contract to supply Russian gas to the country.
Pezeshkian said the treaty opens “a new chapter in Iran’s relations with its brotherly neighbor Russia.”
The warm relations between the two leaders showed how much the invasion of Ukraine changed Russia’s foreign relations, especially in the Middle East.
“Russia appears increasingly to be formulating its approach to the Middle East through the prism of confrontation with the West,” said John Alterman of the Washington-based International Center for Strategic Studies.
Military cooperation between Russia and Iran has drawn attention in Western capitals.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in September that Russia may be supporting Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for shipments of Fas-360 short-range ballistic missiles that the US says Iran recently sent to Russia. did. Iran insists it has not sent missiles to Russia.
However, Iran has exported the Shahed-136 suicide attack drone to Russia and is also helping the Russian government build its own version of the drone.
Russia has promised to sell its most advanced fifth-generation Su-35 fighter jets to Iran in 2023, but few believe the sale will materialize given the possibility of war in Ukraine and opposition from Saudi Arabia.
Nicole Grajewski of the Carnegie Endowment said the treaty’s language on information sharing was not found in other similar agreements. Despite the lack of a mutual defense clause, the treaty is “substantive in many respects,” he said.
Iran has also suffered greatly from the war with Israel. Israel’s attack on Iran in October destroyed not only a site that produces solid-fuel propellant for Iranian ballistic missiles, but also Iran’s Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile system, defense experts said. Everything was destroyed except for the stand.
Israeli air and ground operations in Lebanon also decimated Iran’s proxy Hezbollah and contributed directly to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime, a key ally of Iran in the region.
Donald Trump is expected to return to the White House in January, along with fellow Iran hawks including his nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which is expected to further increase pressure on Iran.
Hannah Notte of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Research in Berlin said the logic of geopolitical conflict with the West continues to bind the two countries together.
“I think the more Israel counters Iran and undermines some kind of balance of power in the region, the more I think it will only increase the willingness on the Russian side to counter that trend.” “Russia views the region through a simplistic prism of conflict with the West, and in that simplistic prism, Israel is an ally of the United States.”
But she said Gulf interests remain important to Russia and could continue to prevent it from becoming, in her words, “fully Iranian.”
