Dr. Sergey Sukhankin
Gulf International Forum, Feb. 18, 2025
“Russia, as a political player, is viewed [in Iran] with a great deal of incredulity […]”
On January 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a treaty forming a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” between Moscow and Tehran. This document became a major strategic document signed between the two countries since 2001. In the 24 years since that agreement, the global geopolitical environment has undergone vast changes. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it overnight became the world’s most sanctioned nation, and its ties with the West—booming in 2001—were de-facto severed.
Though Russia’s break with the West began far earlier than 2022, the post-Ukraine invasion environment dramatically changed the Kremlin’s foreign relations. Growing international isolation prompted Russia to put an emphasis on strengthening ties with other undemocratic regimes, resulting in the signing of strategic treaties with North Korea and Belarus in 2024. However, the Russo-Iranian treaty is fundamentally different from those agreements: its remit goes beyond the narrow realm of defense and security, instead focusing on trade, sanctions evasion, and broader geopolitical questions.
Strategic Ambiguity in Defense, Pragmatism in Economics
While the Treaty is quite long—consisting of the preamble and 47 separate clauses—two fundamental themes should be highlighted.
First, defence and security. Unlike in Russia’s treaties with North Korea and Belarus, military cooperation is not the dominant theme in the document. However, this does not mean that cooperation in this sector is excluded from the scope of the Treaty. On the contrary, approximately one-third of the document discusses various aspects of Russo-Iranian coordination in defense and security. Yet one aspect drastically weakens the level of strategic commitment of both parties in this realm. Specifically, the document conspicuously does not oblige either party to commit militarily to defend the other in case of an armed conflict—a guarantee of collective security, as NATO has with its Article 5 and the Russian-dominated CSTO has with its Article 4. Instead, according to Clause 3 of the agreement, in case of an armed conflict with a third party, Russia and Iran must abstain from “rendering any military or any other support to the aggressor.” This aspect of the treaty de-facto reiterates a security-related provision of the previous 2001 Russo-Iranian agreement. ….SOURCE