Editor’s Note: Javad Heiran-Nia is a frequent contributor to Stimson on Iranian foreign policy, which he focuses on at a Tehran-based think tank. He is particularly expert on Iran’s relations with Russia, China, and neighboring states.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on Oct. 11 and assured him that relations between the two countries were good and getting better.
“Iran and Russia have good mutual and complementary capacities and can help each other,” Pezeshkian told Putin at their meeting in Turkmenistan on the sidelines of a Central Asian summit. Putin noted that the two countries were cooperating on an international level and shared assessments and approaches to global problems.
Only a month ago, Pezeshkian was at the United Nations in New York, where he made numerous pitches for a better Iranian relationship with the West. But his comments came in the context of Iran’s growing military ties with Russia, which are the product both of external developments and of an internal political competition that has elevated the power of the deep state.
In the current crisis in the Middle East, Russia has asked both Iran and Israel to exercise restraint. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Oct. 2, “We call for restraint by all sides against the backdrop of what is happening.”
Russia has raised serious concerns over Israel’s anticipated retaliation after Iran sent nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel following a series of Israeli assassinations of senior Iranian and allied officials. But it remains unclear what Russia would do to support Iran in the event of a wider war between Iran and Israel, which is home to nearly a million people of Russian descent.
Iran’s shift toward a closer relationship with Russia is in stark contrast to the “Neither East, nor West” outlook of the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei. In fact, during the height of the revolution, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Khamenei – like his Western counterparts — called the Soviet Union an “aggressor.”
However, the liberal foreign policy of Mehdi Bazargan’s first post-revolutionary government, which followed a balanced approach including relations with the U.S., was weakened and finally eliminated by Islamist groups of both right and left. In the ensuing decades, reformists who sought to repair relations with the West were also removed from the Iranian power structure.
Over 45 years, the deep state of security organizations has determined the “big game’’ of Iran’s foreign policy to the detriment of successive presidential administrations. These are permitted to engage in a ‘‘small game’’ of foreign policy maneuvers provided that they do not disrupt the overall power structure.
Increasing ties with Russia are controversial among Iranians. Animosity toward Russia has long historical roots in Iran, dating to the competition between rival empires and Russia’s absorption of big parts of the Persian empire. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union also held little attraction for Iran. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of American influence in the Middle East in the 1990s, Moscow became less objectionable for Tehran. Russia assisted Iran’s nuclear program and began to be seen as a suitable partner for mutual resistance against the economic and military pressures of the U.S. and its allies. Cooperation deepened as Russia and Iran worked together to save Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad from a popular revolt backed by the U.S. and Sunni Muslim states. The war in Ukraine, coupled with continued Western sanctions on Iran, has deepened this alignment.
According to Iran’s deep state, the West’s opposition to Iran is substantive and fundamental, based on the nature of the Islamic Republic. The West has never wanted a strong Iran and will never tolerate a strong Iran, but seeks its overthrow, according to this camp’s view.
Accordingly, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989, believes that relations with the East should be the main direction of foreign policy.
Khamenei notes that even when Iran has assisted the West, as it did in helping the U.S. overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, it is branded as a member of an “axis of evil.” Similarly, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not have good results for Iran; the Trump administration quit the deal in 2018 and reimposed economic sanctions.
While some in Iran and the U.S. saw the JCPOA as the beginning of a major thaw, the Iranian deep state viewed the deal as a way to transform the nuclear issue from a political to a technical matter and not as a platform to improve relations with the West in other fields. Accordingly, Trump’s withdrawal led Iran’s deep state to define trust in the West as “begging diplomacy.”
Iranian leaders see the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to increase Moscow’s dependence on Tehran as well as to receive advanced Russian military technology such as Su-35 fighter jets and the S-400 defense missile system. In this regard, sending short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to some news accounts, can give Tehran bargaining leverage with Moscow.
Iran sees three geopolitical fault lines connecting the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the western periphery of China and believes that the West is seeking to dominate all three areas. From Iran’s point of view, Russia is an important pole against American hegemony.
The Gaza war has also brought Iran and Russia closer. The brutal nature of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack of last Oct. 7, and the U.S. failure to achieve a cease-fire, have reinforced the message that Washington cannot guarantee stability in the Middle East. The alignment in narratives and perceptions between Iran and Russia goes beyond Gaza. It is part of a broader strategy aimed at transforming the world order into a more multipolar structure, in which Western dominance is contested and alternative power centers, such as Iran and Russia, play a more prominent role.
At a recent meeting of security representatives of the BRICS countries in Russia, Iran proposed establishing a ‘’BRICS Security Commission’’ to cooperate in the fields of international peace and security and deal with common global threats.
Iran’s growing ties with Russia have not been affected so far by domestic political changes. After the election of reformist Pezeshkian this summer, Nasser Kanaani, then the spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, assured Moscow that the “Look to the East” policy is strategic and not tactical. Pezeshkian underlined in a newspaper opinion piece that relations with Russia and China were central for his government and that any de-escalation with the West would not mean Iran was changing its fundamental orientation.
Putin, meeting with Ali Akbar Ahmadian, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, praised the new Iranian government’s point of view and said he was happy that cooperation with Russia is a priority for Pezeshkian. Of course, he attributed the progress in Tehran’s relations with Moscow in recent years to the support of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s paramount leader.
A possible long-term strategic agreement with Russia, membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, and in BRICS, have institutionalized Iran’s eastward policy in the country’s decision-making structure.
However, skepticism about this alignment is widespread in Iran. Indeed, many remember that Russia has supported UN sanctions against Iran in the past and the claims of the United Arab Emirates to three islands in the Persian Gulf controlled by Iran since the 1970s. Moscow also helped prevent a restoration of the JCPOA during negotiations in 2022 that were interrupted by the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov raised new demands insisting that any U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine not affect Russia-Iran economic relations and investment stipulated in the JCPOA.
More recently, Russia has angered Iranians by ignoring Iran’s interests in the South Caucasus and supporting the creation of a corridor between Azerbaijan and Turkey that would sever Iran’s land border with Armenia. Yet the hardline Kayhan newspaper criticized Russia’s critics inside Iran and called them traitors.
Currently, Tehran’s position regarding Russia looks weak. But at the same time, Moscow fears that Iran will seek an improvement of relations with the West to its detriment.
Rajab Safarov, a former member of the Russian Federation Presidential Political Council and head of the Iran Commission at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said recently that a pro-Western Iran is far more dangerous to Russia than a nuclear Iran.
For Russia, closer ties with Iran are necessary to increase pressure on America and create a de facto united front against the U.S. from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. Despite occasional rifts such as that over the Zangezur Corridor between Azerbaijan and Turkey, cooperation continues based on a shared view of the international system and a common understanding of mutual threats.
Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran. His book, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf, is being published by Routledge. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @J_Heirannia.
Editor’s Note: Javad Heiran-Nia is a frequent contributor to Stimson on Iranian foreign policy, which he focuses on at a Tehran-based think tank. He is particularly expert on Iran’s relations with Russia, China, and neighboring states.
By Barbara Slavin, Distinguished Fellow, Middle East Perspectives
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on Oct. 11 and assured him that relations between the two countries were good and getting better.
“Iran and Russia have good mutual and complementary capacities and can help each other,” Pezeshkian told Putin at their meeting in Turkmenistan on the sidelines of a Central Asian summit. Putin noted that the two countries were cooperating on an international level and shared assessments and approaches to global problems.
Only a month ago, Pezeshkian was at the United Nations in New York, where he made numerous pitches for a better Iranian relationship with the West. But his comments came in the context of Iran’s growing military ties with Russia, which are the product both of external developments and of an internal political competition that has elevated the power of the deep state.
In the current crisis in the Middle East, Russia has asked both Iran and Israel to exercise restraint. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Oct. 2, “We call for restraint by all sides against the backdrop of what is happening.”
Russia has raised serious concerns over Israel’s anticipated retaliation after Iran sent nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel following a series of Israeli assassinations of senior Iranian and allied officials. But it remains unclear what Russia would do to support Iran in the event of a wider war between Iran and Israel, which is home to nearly a million people of Russian descent.
Iran’s shift toward a closer relationship with Russia is in stark contrast to the “Neither East, nor West” outlook of the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei. In fact, during the height of the revolution, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Khamenei – like his Western counterparts — called the Soviet Union an “aggressor.”
However, the liberal foreign policy of Mehdi Bazargan’s first post-revolutionary government, which followed a balanced approach including relations with the U.S., was weakened and finally eliminated by Islamist groups of both right and left. In the ensuing decades, reformists who sought to repair relations with the West were also removed from the Iranian power structure.
Over 45 years, the deep state of security organizations has determined the “big game’’ of Iran’s foreign policy to the detriment of successive presidential administrations. These are permitted to engage in a ‘‘small game’’ of foreign policy maneuvers provided that they do not disrupt the overall power structure.
Increasing ties with Russia are controversial among Iranians. Animosity toward Russia has long historical roots in Iran, dating to the competition between rival empires and Russia’s absorption of big parts of the Persian empire. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union also held little attraction for Iran. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the expansion of American influence in the Middle East in the 1990s, Moscow became less objectionable for Tehran. Russia assisted Iran’s nuclear program and began to be seen as a suitable partner for mutual resistance against the economic and military pressures of the U.S. and its allies. Cooperation deepened as Russia and Iran worked together to save Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad from a popular revolt backed by the U.S. and Sunni Muslim states. The war in Ukraine, coupled with continued Western sanctions on Iran, has deepened this alignment.
According to Iran’s deep state, the West’s opposition to Iran is substantive and fundamental, based on the nature of the Islamic Republic. The West has never wanted a strong Iran and will never tolerate a strong Iran, but seeks its overthrow, according to this camp’s view.
Accordingly, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989, believes that relations with the East should be the main direction of foreign policy.
Khamenei notes that even when Iran has assisted the West, as it did in helping the U.S. overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, it is branded as a member of an “axis of evil.” Similarly, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not have good results for Iran; the Trump administration quit the deal in 2018 and reimposed economic sanctions.
While some in Iran and the U.S. saw the JCPOA as the beginning of a major thaw, the Iranian deep state viewed the deal as a way to transform the nuclear issue from a political to a technical matter and not as a platform to improve relations with the West in other fields. Accordingly, Trump’s withdrawal led Iran’s deep state to define trust in the West as “begging diplomacy.”
Iranian leaders see the war in Ukraine as an opportunity to increase Moscow’s dependence on Tehran as well as to receive advanced Russian military technology such as Su-35 fighter jets and the S-400 defense missile system. In this regard, sending short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, according to some news accounts, can give Tehran bargaining leverage with Moscow.
Iran sees three geopolitical fault lines connecting the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the western periphery of China and believes that the West is seeking to dominate all three areas. From Iran’s point of view, Russia is an important pole against American hegemony.
The Gaza war has also brought Iran and Russia closer. The brutal nature of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack of last Oct. 7, and the U.S. failure to achieve a cease-fire, have reinforced the message that Washington cannot guarantee stability in the Middle East. The alignment in narratives and perceptions between Iran and Russia goes beyond Gaza. It is part of a broader strategy aimed at transforming the world order into a more multipolar structure, in which Western dominance is contested and alternative power centers, such as Iran and Russia, play a more prominent role.
At a recent meeting of security representatives of the BRICS countries in Russia, Iran proposed establishing a ‘’BRICS Security Commission’’ to cooperate in the fields of international peace and security and deal with common global threats.
Iran’s growing ties with Russia have not been affected so far by domestic political changes. After the election of reformist Pezeshkian this summer, Nasser Kanaani, then the spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, assured Moscow that the “Look to the East” policy is strategic and not tactical. Pezeshkian underlined in a newspaper opinion piece that relations with Russia and China were central for his government and that any de-escalation with the West would not mean Iran was changing its fundamental orientation.
Putin, meeting with Ali Akbar Ahmadian, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, praised the new Iranian government’s point of view and said he was happy that cooperation with Russia is a priority for Pezeshkian. Of course, he attributed the progress in Tehran’s relations with Moscow in recent years to the support of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s paramount leader.
A possible long-term strategic agreement with Russia, membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, and in BRICS, have institutionalized Iran’s eastward policy in the country’s decision-making structure.
However, skepticism about this alignment is widespread in Iran. Indeed, many remember that Russia has supported UN sanctions against Iran in the past and the claims of the United Arab Emirates to three islands in the Persian Gulf controlled by Iran since the 1970s. Moscow also helped prevent a restoration of the JCPOA during negotiations in 2022 that were interrupted by the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov raised new demands insisting that any U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine not affect Russia-Iran economic relations and investment stipulated in the JCPOA.
More recently, Russia has angered Iranians by ignoring Iran’s interests in the South Caucasus and supporting the creation of a corridor between Azerbaijan and Turkey that would sever Iran’s land border with Armenia. Yet the hardline Kayhan newspaper criticized Russia’s critics inside Iran and called them traitors.
Currently, Tehran’s position regarding Russia looks weak. But at the same time, Moscow fears that Iran will seek an improvement of relations with the West to its detriment.
Rajab Safarov, a former member of the Russian Federation Presidential Political Council and head of the Iran Commission at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said recently that a pro-Western Iran is far more dangerous to Russia than a nuclear Iran.
For Russia, closer ties with Iran are necessary to increase pressure on America and create a de facto united front against the U.S. from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. Despite occasional rifts such as that over the Zangezur Corridor between Azerbaijan and Turkey, cooperation continues based on a shared view of the international system and a common understanding of mutual threats.
Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran. His book, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf, is being published by Routledge. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @J_Heirannia.
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