What are the links between Russia and Iran? The Russian war in Ukraine broke out two years ago, but Russian power was already creeping into the Middle East, initially via Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Then the Israel-Gaza war broke out on 7 October, the protagonism of the Iranian mullahs’ regime came to the fore, and the Russian role in the region was forgotten. Yet this role is profound and is being maintained despite the refocusing of foreign policy on the war in Ukraine.
This Russian role is demonstrated today by the comparison of the two parallel wars: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas. The Kremlin might have remained neutral, but in fact, it is already involved, less by its own volition than by the normal flow of events. Let’s go back to where we started: the Cold War. The USSR-Syria relationship was solid, but in the end, it produced no more than support for Hafez al-Assad’s ambitions in Lebanon. This tropism continues to this day.
The Russia-Iran aspect is more subtle, but it was not self-evident. The Iranian Revolution was founded on the rejection of the two Satans, the United States and the Soviet Union, in 1979. Soviet power then refocused entirely on its proximity to the Arab military dictatorships. The Kremlin had nothing to gain from this: in 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded the Emirate of Kuwait, the USSR dissolved and the Kremlin, through Edvard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Gorbachev, gave “Desert Storm” a diplomatic green light. Hafez al-Assad followed the Kremlin and gave his blessing to the American operation, symbolised by the photo of Secretary of State James Baker received by Hafez.
Thus, after 1991, the Russian Federation found itself with no possible ally apart from the detestable regime in Tehran. The latter had to reckon with new factors: the atheistic 2nd Satan was no more, Iran’s communist sector had been wiped out, Iranian-Soviet territorial disputes no longer existed, and the Russian-American enmity did not yet exist. By 2008, the Moscow-Washington rift had been sealed at the Munich Security Summit, with Vladimir Putin expressing his vengeful disappointment with the West. The road from Moscow to Teheran was open.
This did not prevent Benjamin Netanyahu, the leading figure in Israeli politics, from seeking a rapprochement with Vladimir Putin. The reason was simple: President Barack Obama wanted to speed up the two-state solution, the absolute nemesis for the Israeli right. A break with Washington was already in the offing, and Netanyahu and Putin vied with each other on friendly terms. Netanyahu took a Viktor Orban-like stance towards Moscow. However, one wondered whether this was in line with Putin’s wishes. Since 2008, Putin has embarked on a course of imperial restoration, with two options: Yalta-style cooperation with the West; or an inevitable clash. The West was not imperial enough to understand the first option, so the second was imposed. For Putin, Netanyahu became infinitely less profitable than Imam Khamenei in his plan for a great Russian neo-imperial clash.
The Russian-Iranian rapprochement was able to take place even more quickly than the Russian-Western divorce. Putin slipped like a shadow into the Iranian octopus in the Middle East, stretching from Yemen to Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Apart from Israel, there was the case of powerful Turkey to deal with: Recep Tayyip Ergodan would be busy in Syria fighting Iran’s vassals, and reluctant to increase his friction with Putin elsewhere in the Middle East, even daring a consummate balancing act by selling Bayraktar drones to the Ukrainian army in the middle of a war, without incurring Putin’s ire. Hezbollah would not have a bad word to say about Putin or Ramzan Kadyrov, and the wars in Muslim Chechnya would be completely forgotten.
The West would be humiliated in Syria, precisely at the same time as the Russian army entered Crimea and the Donbas. The United States would launch a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran around the JCPOA. But the Washington-Tehran rift initiated by Donald Trump allowed the discreet Moscow-Tehran axis to strengthen. The latter two capitals were able, and even obliged, to cooperate militarily and usefully as soon as Trump broke away, since Iran, cut off from the West, had only the Russian card to play, and Russia had to play the Iranian card, having failed in its attempts to divide the United States and Europe. Donald Trump himself was unable to realign his diplomacy because the equation was impossible: how could he be a friend of Russia, an enemy of Iran, a friend of Israel and the Gulf states, and a critic of the European Union, all at the same time? Putin automatically found himself in the front row of the war on the pro-Iranian axis, the famous “Shia axis”. The Kremlin dominated Ba’athist Syria in tandem with the Iranian military-secular regime. The beginning of a tacit Moscow-Tehran condominium was taking shape and continues to this day. Iranian weapons appear to be in the hands of the Russian army, showing that Teheran knows how to strengthen this new partnership.
On October 7, 2023, the Kremlin took up the mantle of friend of the oppressed, in a flashback to the Soviet era. All that remained of the momentary embellishment with Benjamin Netanyahu was a deconfliction arrangement in the skies over Syria. Indeed, Israel benefited so much that it makes you wonder whether the Kremlin was not encouraging the partial destruction of its Syrian vassal. It is hard to imagine that the staff of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards would approve of this arrangement, given that they are being bombed by the Israeli air force. It cannot be said that the condominium is all love.
As this anti-Israeli axis becomes entrenched in a triple encirclement of Israel, American forces in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, any Western setback becomes interesting in itself for the condominium. It is in Ukraine that such a setback is likely to occur. A Russian victory, even a partial one, against the Ukrainian army, and by association with the Western industrial war machines, would give an unhoped-for boost to this axis, as Western nations would be forced to arbitrate their support between Ukraine and Israel. For the moment, the West is trying to support both, and it is the Ukrainian military who are putting their lives on the line. To a lesser extent, the Israeli army and people too. On the other hand, hardly any Russians are dying in the Middle East, so good for them. Those who are dying for imperial or mystical projects are the Russians in Ukraine and the Palestinians in Gaza.
The fact remains that the linkage between the plans of the Kremlin and those of the Supreme Leader is above all beneficial to the latter. Iranian casualties are minimal compared with the Donbas front. The potential of a Russian victory in Ukraine would be powerful for Iran because Russia would gain immense prestige in the Arab and Muslim world. And in the historical phase that would follow, Russia would be definitively linked to Iran. Russia and Iran do not have the slightest historical friendship, but in the world of expansionist autocracies, these considerations carry no weight, whereas between Westerners the dimension of a large democratic Euro-American family remains strong. This is perhaps the last original feature of the West, and the corresponding flaw in the Putin system: the lack of a common spirit.
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