President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, signed a major cooperation treaty on Friday in the Kremlin, solidifying an alliance between two countries driven by mutual desire to challenge the West.
The treaty was the latest Russia has signed with a country that is engaged in a conflict with Western states since Moscow invaded Ukraine almost three years ago, and represents an effort to improve its global standing before the start of the second Trump presidency.
Iran and Russia have been subjected to numerous sanctions by the West, and trade and finance are at the forefront of the treaty signed Friday.
The published agreement covers military issues and specifies that in case either Iran or Russia are attacked, the treaty signatories would not give any military or other aid to the aggressor that “would facilitate the continuation of the aggression.”
But in contrast to the accords that Moscow has signed with other allies, the deal with Iran stops short of including a mutual defense clause, according to Iran’s ambassador to Moscow.
“Our country’s independence and security, as well as self-reliance, are very important,” Kazem Jalali, told IRNA, an Iranian news agency, according to TASS. “We are not interested in joining any bloc.”
Speaking in the Kremlin after the meeting, Mr. Putin said that the agreement with Iran creates “additional, significant, serious basis to build mutual relations based on trust.”
“For a long time, we have been coordinating our efforts on the international arena,” Mr. Putin said during a news conference.
But analysts of Russian policy in the Middle East said the treaty only formalizes the existing state of affairs in a region where Russia has to be careful to remain friendly with various players that are at odds with each other.
According to Ruslan Suleymanov, an independent Russian analyst of Middle Eastern affairs, the new agreement will codify the current relationship between Russia and Iran but won’t represent a new step for the two countries.
While Russia relies on weapon deliveries from Iran, Mr. Suleymanov said that economically Moscow is much more dependent on the United Arab Emirates.
“It gets harder for Russia to perform a balancing act between Iran and other countries in the region,” Mr. Suleymanov said in a response to written questions. He pointed out that Moscow has been signing declarations with the United Arab Emirates that question Iran’s sovereignty over three strategic islands in the Strait of Ormuz, which reflected Moscow’s increasing dependence on Abu Dhabi.
Nikita Smagin, an expert on Russian policy in the Middle East with the Russian International Affairs Council think tank, said that apart from the ties to the U.A.E., Russia also has to bear in mind its relationship with Saudi Arabia when talking with Iran, since Riyadh is a “very important partner in terms of influencing the prices of oil.”
For instance, Russia hasn’t sent its advanced fighter jets to Iran, likely because of Saudi Arabia’s opposition to the move, according to Mr. Smagin.
“Overall on the one hand, Russia’s strategy to be a universal mediator in the Middle East that can talk to all sides has collapsed since the invasion of Ukraine because Israel and the United States have been removed from the equation,” Mr. Smagin said. “But if we take relations between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., within that triangle, Russia can still remain an equidistant partner to all of them.”
Iranian leaders have portrayed the trip as more than just a state visit, saying it represented a strategic turning point.
“This treaty is not only a key turning point that strengthens our bilateral ties,” wrote Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on the social media network Telegram. He added, “This is not just a political agreement, it’s the road map to the future.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said that the timing of the treaty’s signing was not meant to divert attention from Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Monday, and Mr. Araghchi told state television in Iran that it had been scheduled months ago.
Since the invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Moscow and Tehran have been growing closer. Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles and drones to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, to aid the Kremlin’s war effort. Iran has denied it is sending weapons to Moscow.
The Kremlin has provided some diplomatic support to Tehran and is building two nuclear reactors at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran. Both Moscow and Tehran have recently faced a major setback in the region with the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has been working to counter what it sees as an aggressive and imperial Western hegemony, led by the United States, by creating and formalizing a series of treaties.
The signed treaty said that Russia and Iran “reject unipolarity and hegemony in world affairs.”
In June, Russia signed a partnership agreement with North Korea, and in December, a security treaty with Belarus formalized the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in that country. Both treaties included a mutual defense clause.
Russia also leads what is known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which includes Belarus and several other former Soviet states including Armenia in the Caucasus, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in Central Asia.
Intended as a counterweight to NATO, the organization is based on a principle that an attack against one member should be perceived as an attack against all. The alliance has been challenged recently with Armenia effectively freezing its membership.
For its part, Iran is facing a cascade of challenges at home and in the region, with its militant allies weakened and its economy in shambles because of sanctions. The return of Mr. Trump as U.S. president will most likely bring more pressure and efforts by Washington to isolate Iran.
Apart from defense issues, Russia has been working with Iran and other countries to develop an alternative to the Western-led Swift, a global messaging service that connects more than 11,000 financial institutions and allows them to alert one another about pending transactions.
Moscow also hopes to build a railway through Iran that would connect Russia directly with ports on the Persian Gulf. Mr. Araghchi said that the deal signed on Friday would allow Iran to serve as a passageway for Russian gas exports through its network of pipelines, bringing gas from the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Persian Gulf. It means, he said, that Iran is “becoming a major hub for gas exports.”
Mr. Jalali, the ambassador to Russia, told Iranian media that the leaders of Russia and Iran realized that an older agreement between the two countries was outdated and did not reflect the realities of the current world and regional order.
The new accord, he said, “takes into consideration every aspect of our bilateral relations including our political posturing. How do we view power and how do we move forward together.”
