PSCRP-BESA Reports No 83 (Sept 15, 2024)
by Joseph Epstein
In the past month, Iran has summoned the Russian ambassador, the Iranian Foreign Ministry congratulated Ukraine on its Independence Day and Iranian senior officials have publicly accused Russia of a “stab in the back.”
These developments have largely gone under the radar but are parts of growing fundamental divergences of interest between Moscow and Tehran.
Yet while some cracks have emerged in the relationship, they haven’t stopped Tehran from sending short-range ballistic missiles to Moscow in what U.S. senior security officials have deemed a “dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war.” They also haven’t stopped one of Moscow’s top defense officials, Sergei Shoigu from announcing an imminent bilateral treaty between Russia and Iran.
This hot and cold dynamic has consistently existed between Russia and Iran. And even though both countries are currently cooperating more than in the past, this does not preclude competition in mutual regions of influence. In the West, there are two misperceptions about Russian-Iranian relations. The first presumes that Russia and Iran are allies that easily cooperate, akin to Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. The second is that the Russian-Iranian relationship is brittle enough that either party could easily be coaxed out of cooperation.
The reality is a bit more complex. Currently, Russia and Iran both need each other and have thus been necessitated to cooperated. However, both Moscow and Iran have fundamental differences that are likely unsolvable and there is very little trust between the two countries.
The currently chapter of the Russian-Iranian relationship is based on anti-Western cooperation. Fighting the West has overcome the tacit and historical distrust between the two powers that has existed since the Iranian Revolution. But despite working together politically and militarily, both Moscow and Tehran have continued competing for influence in areas like the Middle East and Caucasus, sometimes pushing for opposing outcomes.
This means that, as BESA’s own Dr. Andrei Kazantsev-Vaisman wrote, relations will never develop into a Stalin-Mao-style full military alliance, but that they will still continue as long as both sides benefit. As Kazantsev-Vaisman noted, the Iranian and Russian economies both rely on exporting often-sanctioned fuel and raw materials and thus economically cannot offer each other much but competition. In fact, in the past, both Russia and Iran have offered to supply energy when the other was more isolated. During former US President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance for Iranian oil exports policy, Russia took over many of Iran’s contracts. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Iran offered to supply energy to Europe. But while Iran used to be a junior partner to Russia, Moscow’s war in Ukraine has caused Tehran to gain the upper hand in the relationship.
Differences over the Zangezur Corridor
The largest current disagreement between Russia and Iran is over the Zangezur Corridor, a proposed route connecting mainland Azerbaijan to the Nakhichevan enclave through Armenian territory along the Iranian border. The route was agreed to by both parties in a 2020 ceasefire agreement, but Yerevan, with prodding from Iran, has since vehemently opposed the project. Last month, Azerbaijan dropped its demand for the corridor as it had become a major roadblock to achieving a peace agreement with Armenia.
Iran has consistently spoken out against the establishment of the Zangezur Corridor, referring to it as a “red line” as it would put Iran’s northern border under complete Turkish and Azerbaijani control. Iran has a tense relationship with Azerbaijan for several reasons: it believes Baku could inspire separatist sentiment in its own sizeable oppressed Azerbaijani community, it is opposed to Baku’s close ties to its archenemy Israel and competitor Turkey and it dislikes the idea of a neighboring secular government with a Shia majority population that presents an alternative example to its people.
The issue of Zangezur is of such importance to Tehran that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei brought it up with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during the latter’s visit to Tehran in July for the Iranian presidential inauguration. It is a sign of Armenia’s importance to Iran that Pashinyan was one of three foreign government leaders that secured meetings with Khamenei during the event.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Baku last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed Russia’s support for the corridor, despite Baku’s decision to drop the issue. Moscow likely believes it would be able to administer such a corridor with peacekeeping troops as was outlined in a 2020 agreement and therefore save some of the influence it has lost in the region over the past several years.
Russia’s decision to support the corridor led to a wave of Iranian condemnation from Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who called it a “red line” to national security official Fadahossein Maleki, who called Russia’s policy shift a “stab in the back” to parliamentarian Ali Nikzad who called on both Russia and Azerbaijan to respect Iran’s borders. It also led to a flurry of articles criticizing Russia in Iranian state media outlets like Tasnim and Mehr.
For Russia, it is of vital importance to keep its influence in this strategic border region. In the past few years, the administration of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has tried to drift away from Moscow after thirty years of total dependence and Baku has always balanced its relations with Moscow. Previously, Russia was able to maintain leverage over both countries through its support to the Armenian separatist Karabakh region. But since Azerbaijan took back the enclave, Russia sees the Zangezur corridor in its interest as it would hope to control the corridor with its peacekeepers, much as it tried to do in the Karabakh region after the Second Karabakh War in 2020.
It is telling that Iranian pressure following Lavrov’s announcement worked. In a meeting with Iranian security officials, Shoigu, who has become one of Putin’s main liaisons with Tehran, assured them that Russia’s position on Zangezur hadn’t changed. Moscow was forced to sacrifice its interests in the Caucasus to keep the support of a crucial ally in its war effort proving that, currently, Iran has more leverage over Russia than Russia has over Iran.
Middle East
Besides the Caucasus, Russia and Iran have been butting heads in the Middle East, particularly over Syria and Israel. In order to keep power during the Arab Spring, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave up much of his independence to Russia and Iran. But both countries have opposing goals in Syria. Russia wants to keep it as a stable vassal in the Middle East, and Iran wants to use it as part of its “axis of resistance,” particularly in its war against Israel.
In the past, Russia has positioned itself between Israel and Iran in Syria, using its modus operandi of creating reliance to Moscow from both parties. It did this by sometimes allowing Israel to carry out airstrikes against pro-Iranian targets while sometimes giving them cover.
Following October 7, Moscow broke from its policy of cordiality with Israel and threw its political weight behind Iran, taking a Soviet-style, anti-Zionist stance. The reason it did so was less about the Middle East and more about Ukraine. Russia had become reliant on Iran for supplying it with drones and ballistic missiles. Additionally, as Moscow became more globally isolated due to the war in Ukraine, it started to look to win over influence from the Global South, whose populations and governments are largely in support of far-left revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles. The Palestinian Cause has positioned itself in the center of such ideology, so by taking a pro-Palestinian position, Moscow also hoped to win more support from these nations. Additionally, since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia began seeing the world much more in a battle of us vs. them. Although Russia has worked with Israel in the past, it recognizes that Jerusalem is the closest ally to the United States, and thus is on the other side.
But unlike the Soviet Union before it, Russia’s current anti-Israel pivot was a political decision and not an ideological one. And it is one that is now putting its foothold in the Middle East, Syria, in danger.
To prevent Syria from being drawn into war, Russia has tried to block Iranian and Iranian proxy attacks originating from Southern Syria. Moscow set up observation posts along the Syrian-Israeli border following Israeli assassinations of high ranking Iranian officials in December 2023 and April 2024. This policy has achieved limited success. While there haven’t been attacks originating from Syrian territory since October 7th, Iran and Hezbollah have often operated in Southern Syria, leading to a significant number of Israeli strikes in the area.
However, although Russia wants to prevent regional war in the Middle East, especially one that would endanger its vassal, it still benefits from some level of conflict. With global focus on the Middle East, less attention is being paid to Russia’s war in Europe. So far, the Syrian government hasn’t been dragged into the conflict, but should Iran become more desperate, it may try to force the Assad regime into playing a larger role, creating more friction with Moscow.
More Reasons to Cooperate
Despite their disagreements, Russia and Iran currently have more reasons to cooperate than not. For one, both are waging wars against the West whether directly or through proxies. If either one of those conflicts were to be solved, then the West’s attention could be focused solely on the other.
Both countries also realized they can cooperate to fight their political and economic isolation. Recently, Iran has joined several alternative international cooperation organizations that Russia is a part of like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. As targets of global economic sanctions, Moscow and Iran have worked together on sanctions evasion. They are also working towards setting up a North-South railroad through Azerbaijan, although no significant progress has been made so far.
Yet all the same, at around $4 billion in 2023, Iran isn’t even in Russia’s top ten economic partners in trade volume. Even after the war in Ukraine, the sum of Russian-Iranian imports and exports lags significantly behind Russia’s trade volume with European Union members like Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, which all still import significant amounts of Russian energy. In fact, even the United States has a significantly larger trade volume with Russia over $5 billion last year. So economic cooperation is limited.
But both Russia and Iran have chosen aggressive and belligerent policy that prioritizes political aspirations over economic gain. So as long as they have the political reasons to cooperate, they will continue to do so.
Joseph Epstein is the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) and a Washington, DC-based analyst focusing on Eurasia and the Middle East. He is a contributing writer for Newsweek and has also been published in Foreign Policy, Novaya Gazeta, The National Interest, the Daily Beast and other publications. Prior to EMET, Epstein worked as a journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia and served in the Israeli military. A graduate of Columbia University, where he studied Political Science and Soviet Studies, Joseph is fluent in Russian and Hebrew.