Russia and Iran aren’t natural partners. Until recently, the two nations tended to view one another with suspicion. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, an alliance has emerged, born not of shared values but a common adversary: the US and its allies. Military collaboration between the two countries has escalated significantly over the past two years. That’s helped Russia sustain its grinding war in Ukraine and given Iran hopes of significantly upgrading its military capabilities.
What’s the history between Russia and Iran?
The two have a complicated backstory. The Russian and Persian empires fought repeatedly in past centuries. In the late 20th century, Iran supported the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, the guerrilla groups that successfully fought Soviet occupation of that country. More recently, Russia treated Iran with ambivalence, maintaining relations while viewing the country as a potentially destabilizing influence in its backyard. Russia for decades has sold Iran civilian nuclear technology, but concerns that the country was pursuing nuclear arms led Russia to join Western countries in 2015 in pressuring Tehran to put limits on its atomic program.
The two drew closer, however, after Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, fighting alongside militias backed by Iran to prop up the regime of their mutual ally, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Russia’s war in Ukraine provoked a tighter embrace.
How did the war in Ukraine bring Russia and Iran closer?
Unable to secure a decisive upper hand in Ukraine, which has been backed by the US and other NATO members, Russian President Vladimir Putin has looked for allies to help him prosecute the war. He’s found two among pariah states that have little to lose from supporting the Kremlin: Iran and North Korea. Both saw providing arms to Russia as an opportunity to access advanced military technology in exchange.
Also, being under tough Western sanctions has proved a bonding experience for Russia and Iran. The two countries, for example, aim to create an alternative payment system to the SWIFT financial-messaging service, which some of their banks were barred from using as part of broader sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.
What’s in the relationship for Russia?
Russia receives Iranian-made drones that it’s been using against Ukraine since mid-September of 2022. Iran is also supplying the technology for a Russian production facility that’s meant to mass produce more of them by 2025. Reports suggest that Iran may be on the verge of sending Russia missiles, as well. In addition, Iran has shared expertise in circumventing and coping with sanctions, which it’s lived with for decades, a prospect now facing Russia.
What’s in the relationship for Iran?
In 2023, a US official said that Russia had offered “unprecedented defense cooperation” to Iran. Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran, working with the country on cyberwarfare, and helping it launch spy satellites, according to Shay Har-Zvi, a former acting director general in Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs who remains close to the country’s security establishment.
So far, the high-end Russian military items Iran most wants remain on its wishlist. That includes Russia’s S-400 advanced air defense system, which would offer an upgrade to the S-300 system Iran currently possesses. The S-400 would enable the Iranians to better protect, among other assets, their nuclear facilities, which Israeli officials have repeatedly implied they would attack by air were Iran to reach the brink of nuclear weapons capability. Iran has always maintained it was pursuing nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, but world powers have doubted that claim.
Iran also wants Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. The planes could transform the capabilities of Iran’s air force, which has relied on aging American fighters bought before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran has received Yak-130 aircraft from Russia for training pilots on new-generation fighters.
Military matters aside, the deepening relationship with Russia serves to ease Iran’s international isolation. Russia supported including Iran in the Jan. 1 expansion of the BRICS group of emerging-market nations, which broadened membership beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to incorporate the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Egypt and Iran. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia and Iran have announced a raft of new business deals that cover goods including turbines, polymers, medical supplies and automotive parts. And the two countries are spending billions of dollars to speed up delivery of cargoes along rivers and railways linked by the Caspian Sea in projects that could shield their commercial links from Western interference and build new ones with fast-growing economies in Asia.
How far can the friendship go?
Russia and Iran have plans to cement their cooperation in an official strategic partnership. Even so, theirs remains a marriage of convenience that has limits.
Russia’s willingness to cooperate with Iran is constrained by its desire to manage its relations with other Middle Eastern countries, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have strained ties with Iran, and Israel, which has been locked in a low-boil conflict with the Islamic republic for decades. Russia isn’t likely to provide Iran direct assistance with militarizing its nuclear program. And it’s unlikely to take Iran’s side completely in its shadow war with Israel, though it has been very critical of Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip in response to an October assault from there by the Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas.
