PSCRP-BESA Reports No 180 (January 27, 2026)
At the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Iran was gripped by mass public protests unprecedented in recent decades both in scale and in the level of violence. They began as a reaction to the most severe economic and environmental crisis in the country’s history, which reached its peak by January 2026, but within a few days evolved into an anti-government political movement. At the time of writing, it is still impossible to determine whether the leaders and participants of the protests will succeed in overthrowing the fundamentalist regime of radical Shiite Islamists, or whether the authorities, as in the past, will manage to suppress the burgeoning revolutionary process.
What is already clear, however, is that the events unfolding in Iran directly affect not only the interests of the great powers—the United States, the EU, and China—but also several countries that are parties to conflicts in other regions, such as Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Position
In this context, the position of official Kyiv appears the most obvious and transparent, as it has unequivocally expressed support for Iran’s civil and political opposition. The reasons for this are clear. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Tehran has been one of Russia’s largest suppliers of weapons and military technologies, which Moscow has widely employed on the Ukrainian front.
Thus, according to U.S. government sources cited by Bloomberg, Iran has supplied Russia with ballistic and air-defense missiles worth around US$2.7 billion, which were used by the Russian army in its war against Ukraine. This included hundreds of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles, nearly 500 other short-range ballistic missiles, and around 200 surface-to-air missiles for air-defense systems. According to the same sources, Russian forces also received millions of rounds of ammunition and artillery shells, as well as Shahed-136 kamikaze drones and the transfer of technology to produce them on Russian territory under the name Geran-2, worth US$1.75 billion.
Accordingly, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, commenting on the mass protests in Iran, which he described as “effectively an uprising,” said that “these things won’t get easier for Russia.” He urged the international community “not [to] miss this moment when changes are possible,” since “every decent person on this planet,” in his words, “truly wants the people of Iran to finally free themselves from the current regime that has brought so much evil to Ukraine and to other countries.” That is why, Zelensky concluded, “every leader, every country, and international organizations must step in now and help the people remove those guilty of what Iran has sadly become.”
Judging by opinion polls, the Ukrainian leader’s view largely reflects public sentiment in Ukraine. Thus, in a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in July–August 2025—that is, several weeks after the end of the 12-day Iran–Israel war—
42% of respondents said they supported Israel, and only 3% supported Iran. (Another 42% of those surveyed sympathized with neither side, and 13% were unable to answer the question.) The same trend was evident in an earlier KIIS survey conducted in early 2023, which showed that after the full-scale invasion—especially after Russia used lethal weapons supplied by Iran—64% supported Israel, while only 1% supported Iran, and 18% did not support either side.
This contrasted sharply with the institute’s survey in December 2021, conducted before the full-scale invasion, when 54% of respondents supported neither side, 28% supported Israel, and only 1% supported Iran. It also revealed a significant divergence from public opinion in Russia, where, according to Levada Center data, only 3% of respondents sympathized with Israel, while 25% sympathized with Iran and 53% with neither side.
Russia’s Position
As for official Moscow, its stance toward the events unfolding in Iran and the model of the repeatedly proclaimed allied relationship with Tehran remains rather ambivalent. On the one hand, in January of last year the long-discussed 20-year “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Plan” between the two countries was signed. The agreement, ratified in April and May respectively by the Russian and Iranian parliaments, demonstrated a new phase of military and economic rapprochement between Moscow and Tehran.
On the other hand, Iran did not conceal its skepticism regarding Russia’s reliability, given that Moscow refrained from providing direct support to Tehran during the 12-day Iran–Israel war in June 2025. Nevertheless, on December 17, 2025, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran signed a document in Moscow establishing a framework for consultations in 2026–2028 aimed at the practical implementation of the aforementioned plan, which, judging by all appearances, was intended to demonstrate that the incident had, at least at this stage, been resolved.
Iran clearly needs cooperation with Russia, primarily in the nuclear sphere. Russia, for its part, undoubtedly needs Iran’s support in coordinating sanctions-related issues and in confronting the pro-American bloc in regions that still represent significant geopolitical interests for Moscow, such as the South Caucasus and the Middle East. This is all the more so because, due to the war in Ukraine, as commentators note,
Russia has already lost—or risks losing in the near future—several of its key allies, such as the Assad regime in Syria in 2024 and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
Against this backdrop, Iran’s value to Moscow appears, at first glance, only to have increased. Thus, at the end of October 2025, Russia’s ambassador to Tehran, Alexey Dedov, said in an interview with the ISNA news agency that cooperation between the two countries had reached an unprecedented level, and that Russia supports Iran in seeking solutions to issues related to its nuclear program. Indeed, already at the end of September of that year, Rosatom and Iran Hormoz signed a US$25 billion contract to build the first four of the eight planned new nuclear power plants in Iran.
There is little doubt that the declared “purely civilian nature” of Iran’s nuclear program includes a powerful military component. In fact, on November 2, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian effectively confirmed this, stating, according to the same agency, that Iran would make every effort to rebuild nuclear facilities destroyed in June 2025 by Israeli and U.S. air strikes. It is no coincidence that in Jerusalem and Washington in recent months the likelihood of a new confrontation with Iran has been seriously discussed, although the team of U.S. President Donald Trump clearly hoped—and apparently still hopes, even amid mass anti-government protests in Iran—that such a scenario can be prevented through diplomatic means.
Given these trends, it would have been logical to expect Moscow to side with Iran’s leadership in the current socio-political crisis, which poses a real threat to the survival of the ayatollahs’ regime. However, at the official level Russia has so far avoided direct assessments of what is happening in Iran. One of the few more or less explicit declarations by the Russian authorities was a statement by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, condemning the United States and Israel for threatening to strike Iran in response to the killing of protesters by Iranian security forces. Otherwise, the rhetoric of Russian officials has remained quite restrained.
An example is the statement by the Russian embassy in Iran, which, unlike its unequivocal support for Iran’s nuclear program almost three months earlier, this time limited itself to a cautious expression of concern over clashes by “certain elements with law enforcement officers who are doing their job to ensure order and legality.” It also assured that despite “protests and demonstrations in some provinces” linked to “economic difficulties that the government is actively addressing… overall, normal life continues as usual.” Nearly two weeks later, during which Moscow remained largely silent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov himself declared that “no third party can alter the fundamental nature of relations” between the two countries. However, this was not followed by any sustained concrete steps on Russia’s part.
Among the likely motives behind the cautious stance of the Russian authorities is, apparently, their reluctance—despite regular attacks on the Americans—to enter into direct confrontation with Donald Trump, on whom the Kremlin still pins hopes that the U.S. president will be able to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine on Moscow’s terms. Therefore, it likely does not seem rational to them to take actions that could provoke unproductive irritation from the White House, whose occupant has openly—albeit so far mostly at a declarative level—supported Iranian society’s protest against the Islamist fundamentalist regime. Another possible motive may be the interests of Russia’s oil lobby, which may well be counting that Iran’s exit from the relatively narrow energy markets available to sanctioned regimes—primarily India and China—will trigger price growth and allow Russian companies to occupy the niche vacated by Iran.
Nevertheless, Moscow may well provide some form of support to its Iranian allies. It is clear that Moscow will not rescue Iran through direct military intervention. Thus, media reports have already appeared about possible Russian deliveries to Iran of military equipment that could be effective in suppressing armed resistance by regime opponents, such as Mi-28 attack helicopters and Spartak armored vehicles. In any case, they will clearly try to provide such assistance without much publicity.
Much more visible is Russia’s propagandistic and diplomatic support for Iran’s theocratic regime. On the former point, it appears that most efforts are directed at criticizing “external forces” allegedly responsible for destabilizing Iran and its surroundings, preferably doing so on international platforms, primarily within organizations of the “Global South.”
The diplomatic dimension looks somewhat more substantial. Moscow, which is trying to regain the mediator status in the Middle East that it lost after invading Ukraine, is making visible efforts to reduce the threat of a possible U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran’s military facilities and governing institutions. In doing so, it seeks to give its Tehran partners an additional chance to preserve their regime, while also restoring—at least partially—its own reputation in the region and in the world at large.
In this regard, a telling example is the phone call initiated by Vladimir Putin with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which the Russian president offered his services to de-escalate tensions between Jerusalem and Tehran. According to available information, Netanyahu responded positively to the idea. In fact, several days before mass protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials, according to American and Israeli media, used Russian channels to convey a message to the Iranian leadership that Israel would not strike Iranian targets if it were not attacked first, receiving a positive response in return.
It appears that after the protests began in Iran, the position of the Israeli leadership did not change, despite the fact that, as an opinion poll published on January 16, 2026 showed, three out of every four Israelis support Israel joining a hypothetical U.S. attack on Iran (of these, 29% supported this idea only if Iran first attacked or was preparing to attack Israel, while 44% would support Israeli participation regardless of Iranian actions). Only 19% believed that an attack should be left to the U.S. alone. In this sense, members of Israel’s political leadership deemed it advisable to join the recommendations of several U.S. Arab partners urging the American administration to refrain from attacking Iran, which, in their view, “can bring instability into the region”.
In turn, the Israeli leadership argued that the Iranian regime has not yet weakened to the point where U.S. military strikes could lead to the fall of the ayatollahs’ regime. They also fear the opposite scenario—that at this stage, external military intervention could “fail to finish the job” begun by demonstrators in their protest against the regime. According to a report by The New York Times, later widely cited by other international and Israeli media, another argument in favor of asking the U.S. to refrain from striking Iran at this stage, voiced—according to the same sources—by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his phone conversation with Donald Trump, was Israel’s alleged lack of readiness and a shortage of interceptors. (Boaz Levy, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries—one of Israel’s main producers of advanced and unique air-defense systems—while not directly addressing the unconfirmed NYT publication, effectively refuted this argument by stating that “interceptors are produced around the clock,” and that Israel is ready for an Iranian challenge.)
In any case, President Donald Trump soon stated that he decided not to strike Iran “on his own,” dismissing claims of outside pressure, and praised Tehran for canceling what he said were planned mass executions of detained protesters. At the same time, as can be noted, he continues to maintain suspense over whether he might at some point return the option of military intervention in Iran to the agenda.
Indeed, just a few days after this statement, it became known that the United States was sending a carrier strike group to Iran’s shores, redeploying fighter jets and bombers of various types to the region, along with air-defense systems. For its part, the IDF had already by January 22, 2026 fully completed preparations for a possible American operation. Even in this situation, however, different scenarios remain possible.
Against this backdrop, Moscow may, fairly or not, chalk up one or two diplomatic points to its credit and continue to refrain from binding steps and statements.
What the Authorities Think, What the Media Say?
Naturally, Russia’s leaders do not like the current domestic political situation in Iran. It too closely resembles the experience of the “color revolutions” in post-Soviet countries, which resulted in Moscow losing a significant part of its influence in a space that it still considers—more than three and a half decades after the collapse of the USSR—to be a zone of its exclusive geopolitical interests. But while at the official level Russian officials still speak cautiously, at most allowing themselves from time to time to criticize “external forces” for their “interference in the crisis in Iran,” the real attitude of the Russian authorities toward what is happening is freely voiced by the pro-Kremlin press.
In publications by Russian state media, reviewed by journalist Sergey Rybalkin, Iranian protesters are described as “mutineers,” “rebels,” or “rioters,” while the protests themselves are labeled “disturbances,” with almost no mention of the causes that triggered the current powerful wave of protests in the country. Likewise, the widespread violence by security forces—leading to the deaths or injuries of many thousands of Iranian citizens—is ignored. And when these facts can no longer be silenced, a classic propaganda device is employed: claims that it is “armed terrorists” who are opening fire on people, allegedly exploiting the protests.
At this stage, it is still difficult to say whether such statements and assessments will, as has happened in the past, become the language of official Russian government documents. For now, commentators believe that Moscow’s willingness to save the Iranian regime should not be overstated. Therefore, Tehran can count on Russian consultations and supplies of suitable weapons, as well as the possibility of providing asylum to Iranian leaders—just as was previously done for Yanukovych, Assad, and the heads of other regimes allied with Russia when matters took a serious turn for them. But at this stage—hardly more than that.