Ukraine recently carried out a strike on ships in the Caspian Sea, claiming that the vessels were “used in military cargo shipments involving Iran.” In addition, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia was providing “new assistance to the Iranian regime.” He said, “Since the beginning of July, we have recorded active Russian satellite surveillance of the Gulf states and US military facilities located there.”
The Ukrainian accusations are important because they reveal more of the connections between Moscow and Tehran. Many of these connections were already known.
Russia and Iran, along with China, are key players in seeking to change the world order and weaken the US hegemony that began in the 1990s.
It’s worth recalling some of the context here. Iran was a US partner during the era of the shah before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. However, the revolution did not lead Tehran to rush into the arms of Russia during the Cold War. The leaders of the revolution wanted to pursue a third way between the US and the Soviets.
They also had to deal with the fact that the Soviets were in Afghanistan at the time, and there was an Islamic insurgency there against the Russians. The Iran-Iraq war also began in the 1980s, and the Soviets supplied Iraq with arms.
Iran begins developing missile program
In the 1990s, things began to change.
The Soviet Union collapsed, and the Russians left Afghanistan. America’s hegemony and what former president George H.W Bush called the “New World Order” had begun. Russia and Iran were now relatively weak powers in that new world order.
Beginning around 1992, just after the Gulf War, Russia has played an important role in supporting Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities over several decades. Moscow helped complete Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant and has continued nuclear cooperation through the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom.
This matters because the United States had shown what its new military power looked like with the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) – a shift toward asymmetric, low-cost, high-impact capabilities. Precision weapons and technology had destroyed the Iraqi army. Iran and Russia had to bide their time.
Times were changing. In 1996, China founded the SCO, which included Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The economic bloc known as BRICS also began to take shape in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For Iran, this produced an opportunity to work with non-Western countries, including Russia and China. This relationship has provided Tehran with access to Russian expertise and technology.
Iran was developing its missile program: Technology appears to have come from North Korea, China, and various other sources. Russian entities were accused of transferring missile-related technology to Iran. The result was a relationship in which Russia has helped Iran preserve important strategic capabilities. For Moscow, this made sense. Iran could help balance the US. It was a long road back for Moscow to confront the West.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin was willing to bide his time. This concept was also adopted by China. China’s approach, what it called “hide your strength, bide your time,” often associated with the phrase “tao guang yang hui,” emerged under Deng Xiaoping as China rebuilt its economy and international position after the Mao era.
Deng emphasized avoiding confrontation while accumulating economic and national power. China’s leader Jiang Zemin largely maintained this cautious approach during the 1990s, as did Hu Jintao after 2002, despite China’s rapidly expanding economic power and increasing influence.
Under Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, China has increasingly departed from this restraint.
Beijing’s military strength is expanding, and it has adopted what is sometimes called “wolf warrior diplomacy,” China’s more assertive and sometimes confrontational diplomatic style, particularly associated with the Xi Jinping era.
Chinese diplomats increasingly challenge criticism of Beijing publicly, including on social media, and aggressively defend China’s policies.
Putin felt Moscow had been humiliated in the 1990s, especially during the Kosovo war. He rebuilt Russian power slowly, first defeating the Chechens and then fighting Georgia in 2008.
In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas.
In 2015, Moscow intervened in Syria. Russia and Iran worked together in Syria. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force head Qasem Soleimani is credited with having encouraged Putin to intervene.
For years, the Russians and Iranians dominated at the Astana talks – sponsored by Russia, Turkey, and Iran, and hosted by Kazakhstan.
However, things began to change after the invasion of Ukraine. Designed to accelerate the decline of the West and reshape world order, the invasion has not gone as planned for Moscow. Iran helped Moscow by supplying it with Shahed drones. Used in the thousands to terrorize Ukrainians, the Iranian drones have not helped Russia win the war.
Russia-Iran connection key to 2015 nuclear deal
As such, the Iran-Russia connection has not actually enabled either country to achieve major wins.
However, each country sees it as in its interest to help the other confront the US and the West. There is also an interplay here. Moscow was involved in supporting Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.
The Russia-Iran connection was key to the deal. When former president Barack Obama entered office in 2009, his administration sought a “reset” with Russia while making Iran’s nuclear program a major diplomatic priority.
One early decision was to abandon the Bush administration’s planned missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, replacing them with a different, phased missile-defense architecture.
The administration argued the change better addressed the evolving Iranian missile threat, while Moscow welcomed the decision. Obama subsequently sought Russian cooperation in talking with Tehran. Russia participated in the P5+1 negotiations that eventually produced the 2015 nuclear agreement. Moscow was able to be both a strategic competitor and pretend to be a “good cop” diplomatic partner for Washington.
This is the broader context of how we got here. Russia has backed Iran for many years. It wants a multi-polar world order. Other countries, such as Pakistan and Turkey, also want this multi-polar world. It’s plausible that Russia sees the US and Israeli conflict with Iran as an opportunity.
Moscow assumes the world will be distracted by the war and that it will use US resources, including munitions, which will mean fewer munitions for Ukraine.
Iran sees the conflict as one that spans thousands of kilometers of frontlines in the Middle East, from Jordan to Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
Russia likely sees it as a world struggle. China does as well. What this means is that Moscow would like to use Iran against the US in the same way Russia believes Ukraine was used against Moscow.