By Anton Evstratov
The visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Tehran was an important demonstrative step in the polarization of the world’s centers of power.
On July 19, Russian leader Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran, where during one day he had talks with the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Reisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The visit was both demonstrative (an attempt to show the international and Russian public that Moscow has allies and partners, despite the West’s desire to isolate it) and pragmatic (efforts to reach an agreement on Syria with Tehran and Ankara, the division of spheres of influence in the gas and oil market with IRI, the export of grain from Ukraine, as well as Russian-Iranian military and technical cooperation).
With regard to the first case study, there was an attempt to start building, and most importantly, to show the possibility of building a new format of cooperation between states that are extremely different in terms of culture and values of societies on the one hand and foreign policy interests on the other. In a sense, this format itself is a kind of challenge to the Western model of cooperation, which assumes, at least at the level of discourse, alliances and partnerships based on similar values.
The timing of Putin’s visit to Tehran turned out to be extremely convenient – right after his American counterpart visited Israel and Saudi Arabia and signed there a joint declaration on strategic partnership with Tel-Aviv, openly directed against Iran. The Russian president thus sort of “responded” to Biden’s move, and in the perception of the world community, media, political observers and analysts, this response turned out to be successful. Nevertheless, it is impossible to connect Putin’s trip with Biden’s visit directly – said trip of the Russian leader was prepared for several months, and was formally timed to coincide with the Astana format, and only then successfully “coincided” with the tour of the American leader. Especially important here is the demonstrated inability of the United States to unite the Arab states into a single anti-Iranian front, which shades the much more successful, at least from the media and propaganda point of view, visit of Vladimir Vladimirovich.
The voyage undoubtedly opens the floodgates for a maximum rapprochement between Russia and Iran, but at the moment it is mostly a demonstration of intentions. Nevertheless, if there is sufficient political will in the elites of both countries, the scenario of a strategic partnership and even a long-term alliance between Moscow and Tehran is realistic. Much will depend on the desire of the Russian elites, who traditionally, despite all the contradictions and disagreements, have their sights set on the West, while in Iran the conservatives who traditionally speak from tough anti-Western positions and are focused on Russia are now in power both in Parliament and in the government. In this context, for Iran, this visit is fully in line with President Reisi’s declared East-oriented foreign policy course.
One of the important events of the day of negotiations was the signing of the largest agreement in the history of the Iranian oil industry by Gazprom NIOC (National Iranian Oil Company, the Iranian state oil and gas company), according to some reports, for 40 billion dollars. Under the agreement, Russia is to make major investments in the Persian Gulf oil and gas fields and modernize Iran’s existing infrastructure. There is an opinion among experts that with such a favorable contract Russia “compensates” Iran for its refusal from the nuclear agreement with the United States.
However, even if Tehran’s “nuclear deal” with the world’s leading powers is renewed, and Iran begins to supply its energy carriers to Europe, Russia, being involved in the production of these very energy carriers, will certainly become part of this process. Moscow is already trying a similar scheme in Azerbaijan, where Russian companies (in particular, Lukoil) are shareholders of Azerbaijani oil fields.
Another possible scenario is the division of energy markets between Iran and Russia after the resumption of the “nuclear deal” into eastern (which will be claimed by Russia) and western (which Iran will take) markets.
It is possible that we are talking about Iran’s concessions to Russia in China, India and other Asian countries. This is especially relevant against the background of the already reduced volume of purchases of Iranian products in favor of Russian ones in China and South Korea.
Also after Putin’s visit, it became known that Iran would supply Russia with aircraft equipment, taking the place of Western airlines – including Boeing. The countries are negotiating the creation of a new single payment system alternative to SWIFT, and the Russian MIR system will start working in Iran. Concrete steps have been outlined for the construction of the Rasht-Astara railroad, which Russia has been preparing to finance for several years. Russia’s interest in this segment is not incidental, because after the unblocking of transport communications in the South Caucasus, Iran will link Russia through a short railroad route to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, where IRI has large commercial ports. An expanded trade and economic network will take Russia to broader Eurasian horizons – all the way to Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania. All of these projects are the direct result of negotiations between the two countries’ leaders.
As for the aviation equipment, it is possible that Iran will use it to disguise the components for drones, or the machines themselves, which Vladimir Putin has allegedly also agreed to receive from Iran. That was reported, in particular, by representatives of the U.S. State Department. Although Moscow and Tehran have denied these reports, it should be noted that U.S. intelligence that supplies information to the State Department has often been right. The most recent example in this context was the Americans’ reports about an impending Russian special operation in Ukraine in February.
As for Turkey, it is obvious that Putin sees it as part of the Russian Eurasian space, despite its membership in NATO. This explains Moscow’s constant concessions in response to the openly hostile actions and statements of Ankara and its allies. Turkey, in turn, takes advantage of this circumstance and successfully maneuvers between Russia and the West, strengthening its position both in the Middle East and the South Caucasus, including in the areas of traditional Russian influence. However, in Tehran, Khamenei told Turkish President Erdogan that not all of his ambitions can be satisfied. In particular, the Supreme Leader of Iran declared the inviolability of the Iranian border with Armenia, the unacceptability of a new military operation in Syria and support for terrorism. Obviously, this time Erdoğan returned from the Iranian capital not in his usual triumphant role, but in a much more modest one.
Nevertheless, Russia and Turkey used the Tehran opportunity to discuss a number of issues of importance to them during a bilateral meeting of their presidents. In addition to the Syrian situation, they also discussed grain exports from Ukraine, an agreement on which was later signed by Moscow and Ankara with the participation of the UN and Kiev.
In the context of attempts to build a new reality, Iran can become not only a partner country for Russia, but also an example state. If previously Russian political elites, despite their interest in Iran, considered it relatively backward and indirect, recognizing the importance of Iranian energy resources only, now, under sanctions pressure, Tehran, which for more than 40 years has stood up to U.S. and world sanctions, looks completely different to Russians. It is from Iran that Moscow intends to buy aircraft parts and drones, which speaks volumes about the Islamic Republic’s scientific and technological achievements under sanctions. It is with the IRI that Russia is developing economic cooperation, which demonstrates Iran’s achievements in the economy – again, in the face of years of pressure from the outside. As an example, the Russian side can take from Iran the five-year economic planning that has been known in Russia since Soviet times, as well as various methods of state regulation of the economy. However, there is an important obstacle here. In Iran, the state, through various structures and organizations, controls up to 60% of the economy, which allows it to make and carry out plans. In Russia at the moment the economy is in the hands of the big bourgeoisie, and Putin refrains from any radical steps to redistribute property, but the logic of developments in the near future may lead to this.
Author: Anton Evstratov (Russian historian, publicist and journalist living in Armenia, lecturer at the Department of World History and Foreign Regional Studies at the Russian-Armenian University in Yerevan).
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
Image credit: Sputnik/Sergei Savostyanov/Pool via REUTERS