Iran seeks to exploit widening gulf between Russia and the west

Iran’s supreme leader used a recent address to academics to praise the effectiveness of his country’s military drones, which according to Kyiv and the west are being sold to Russia and used to pummel Ukraine’s big cities.

Whereas once people doubted our technology, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “now they’re saying: ‘Iranian drones are very dangerous, why are you selling it to so and so?’.”

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of deploying the Iran-made Shahed-136s against his country, saying Moscow had already ordered thousands more. Iran and Russia deny any trade in combat drones, but what are not in doubt are the increasingly cordial relations between Moscow and Tehran since the full invasion of Ukraine in February.

This was evident during Vladimir Putin’s most recent visit to Tehran, when Khamenei credited Russia’s president with taking “the initiative” in the war before the west imposed a similar conflict on him.

An appreciative Putin responded by calling for enhanced military co-operation between the two countries and held out the prospect that Iran could join trilateral military drills with China.

Iran’s leaders are capitalising on the chasm that has opened up between Russia and the west since the invasion to establish a strategic relationship with the Kremlin that can help minimise the impact of painful US sanctions, analysts say.

Curbs have severed Iran’s links to the global financial system and ability to trade, and deprived it of the revenues needed to keep its economy functioning. Better relations with Moscow can offset that, through trade and investment. Access to Russian military hardware is another aim.

“The mindset in Tehran is that the more the gulf between Russia and the west widens, the bigger the opportunities for Iran,” said Elaheh Koolaee, an international relations professor at the University of Tehran, noting how it had already paved the way for Iran to join the Eurasian Economic Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

“These can help Iran develop its trade ties with other countries, which is an opportunity Iran can’t ignore,” Koolaee said.

There are few signs yet that Moscow views Tehran as a permanent partner, Iranian analysts say, with the relationship for now largely dependent on the course of the war and the stalled process to restore the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. But the Islamic regime sees no other choice but to bet on Putin.

Iran views the US with deep suspicion and suspects its goal is to overthrow the Tehran regime. Iranian politicians say European countries may not share this goal, but they do fully comply with US sanctions that make improvement of trade ties and oil sales impossible.

The US this week assessed that not only were Russian forces using Iranian drones, but that Iranian forces were on the ground in occupied Crimea helping with training. Russia has received dozens of unmanned aerial vehicles from Iran, the White House said, expressing concern that it was seeking additional advanced weapons from Tehran.

Experts say feeding the Kremlin’s war was, for Iran, a first step towards a wider relationship that includes replacing its ageing fleet of fighter aircraft with Russian-made Sukhoi jets.

Decades of US sanctions on arms sales to Iran have prevented it from modernising its air force, while leading it to focus on the development of cheaper ballistic missiles and drones.

“The most modern fighter jets Iran has are MiG-29s bought from the Soviet Union,” said Mohsen Jalilvand, a member of the scientific board at Islamic Azad University, meaning even Tehran’s best military craft are decades old.

“Iran now hopes to buy modern jets such as Sukhoi Su-34 — but whether Russia will sell them to Iran or not is unclear.”

Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s air force, confirmed last month that the country was seeking to buy Sukhoi jets from Russia.

Relations between the two countries have not always been straightforward. President Ebrahim Raisi and other Iranian leaders know Moscow has never been a reliable partner, recalling 19th-century treaties that led to the loss to Russia of modern-day Dagestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. More recently, the contract with Russia to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran has been beset with delays.

The two countries, however, collaborated to keep Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad in power. Russia also backed restoring the nuclear accord that collapsed when the US withdrew in 2018. Talks on the issue remain deadlocked after Tehran and Washington failed to agree on the most recent proposal by the EU.

Iran remains interested in a long-term deal with Russia similar to the one it signed with China in 2021. That agreement was to expand co-operation in areas from energy, petrochemicals and nuclear power to the high-tech and military sectors.

There are signs of a pick-up in Iran-Russia trade. Hessameddin Hallaj, deputy for international affairs at Tehran’s chamber of commerce, said Russian business delegations had visited Iran regularly since May.

Trade between the countries rose to $1.2bn in the six months to September, a third higher than the same period the year before, according to official figures.

Saeed Laylaz, an analyst of Iran’s political economy, pointed out that Russia-Iran trade was limited by the fact that neither needed to buy the other’s most valuable commodity: hydrocarbons.

“Can we sell oil and gas to Russia or vice-versa? No,” he said. “The best potential for co-operation is in the military sector.”