Moscow boosts ties with Tehran as US-Iran tensions escalate

In July 2019, Iran began exceeding the limit on its stockpile of low enriched uranium set under the JCPOA. Iran has also nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since November 2019, also in violation of the JCPOA, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran’s current stockpile brings it dangerously close to the amount needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

With its aggressive nuclear and military brinkmanship strategy having failed to deliver on a path toward economic growth, Iran turned to China, with whom Iran is negotiating comprehensive trade and military agreements, as well as Russia.

In resource-rich Central Asia, which historically has served as strategic depth for Russia against Iran and other regional powers, Russia and Iran partnered closely. With military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Russia has collaborated with Iran against drug traffickers and militants transiting from Afghanistan. Russia and Iran each has cultural, linguistic and historical leverage in the region. Iran offers a unique energy transport route for Central Asian nations to the Persian Gulf and jointly with China built a railway in 2014 connecting Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

The Kremlin saw an opportunity to exploit Iran’s status as a pariah state as early as the mid-1990s, when Russia agreed to construct the nuclear reactor plant at Bushehr. Russia sold Iran the S-300 missile defense system and signed a reported $10 billion military deal in 2016, which included helicopters, planes and artillery systems. 

Russia has been a staunch defender of Iran in the United Nations, most recently in May, when Russia’s UN ambassador emphasized the Kremlin would oppose any extension of an arms embargo on Iran.

Also facing sanctions for its illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, attacks on Ukraine and attempted assassination of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergey Skripal, Russia is motivated to partner with Iran, which has relied on Russia as a key trading partner, especially for its excess oil reserves and a military ally in the Middle East, where for now the Kremlin’s interests coincide with Tehran’s.

Iran and Russia share a common interest and strategy of countering the United States. While deferring to the United States to bear the burden of destroying the Islamic State and combating al-Qaeda, both Tehran and Moscow are focused on limiting US political, military and economic influence in the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

Significant Great Power rivalry has been an ever-present reality for over a century in the Middle East, albeit with a short hiatus following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Iran clearly sees value in growing its bilateral relationships with Russia and China and welcoming their growing influence in the Middle East, even possibly to the point of playing off Moscow and Beijing against one another to obtain more favorable terms.

Weary from the Bush administration’s costly policy of securing US interests through regime change, the United States lacks the leverage to counter China’s and Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East, on which Iran’s ability to counter US sanctions and strategy to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon will increasingly rely.