Iran and Russia’s Fragile Partnership - How America Can Divide Two of Its Main Adversaries

By Maria Snegovaya and Jon B. Alterman

Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has made common cause with Iran. Russia has afforded Iran military support, diplomatic cover, and intelligence. Tehran, in turn, has provided Moscow with weapons of its own and promoted the Kremlin’s propaganda. In July 2022, for example, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei described NATO as a “dangerous creature” and claimed that had Russia not taken the initiative, the West would have caused the war in Ukraine anyway.

For observers of both states, this partnership should not be a surprise. The two countries are among the West’s most implacable opponents. Since Iran’s 1979 revolution, its leaders have been virulently anti-American, claiming to be the constant target of plots to isolate and undermine the Islamic Republic’s government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has argued that the war with Ukraine is really a war with a rapacious NATO out to destroy Russia. The countries are international pariahs, subject to grueling sanctions and in need of partners wherever they can find them. And they are both governed by personalistic authoritarian leaders with the support of an oligarchic elite largely insulated from oversight.

But despite the similarities between the countries, their partnership could prove far more brittle than it first appears. Iran and Russia share a common enemy and system of government. Yet they have a long history of conflict, one that has never quite disappeared. Economically, they are petrostates competing for the same markets. Politically, they are sparring over who should be the primary power in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

They have different approaches to the Middle East, as well. Indeed, other than undermining Western hegemony, they do not share any coherent international agenda. Even when it comes to Washington, they have strategic differences. In the 2024 American presidential election, Russia sought to help Donald Trump. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, meanwhile, Iran plotted to kill him.

Washington and its partners should seize on these differences to drive a wedge between Moscow and Tehran. Doing so doesn’t require cozying up to either government. Instead, the West can pit the two countries’ economies against each other through energy policies that lower oil prices.

They should remind each that in most of the world, they have competing political visions. And they should make it harder for Moscow and Tehran to cooperate in the places they want to. Otherwise, Iran and Russia may overcome their differences and forge a durable partnership. The result would be a more unstable and more violent world.

THE SOURCES OF IRANIAN-RUSSIAN CONDUCT

Russia’s problems with the West date to the very beginning of the post–Cold War era. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, pro-Western reformers introduced disruptive changes designed to rapidly liberalize the economy. But rather than producing widespread growth, the 1990s turned into a painful decade for much of society as Russia’s real per capita GDP fell by 42 percent from 1990 to 1998. The population’s poverty rate jumped to a record 35 percent.

Mortality rates climbed and life expectancy fell. Russians became deeply nostalgic for the Soviet Union and resentful of the United States. Many spread conspiracy theories that the West had plotted to break the Soviet Union apart and that after its collapse, it was withholding needed economic aid and otherwise taking advantage of Russia’s weakness. Eventually, they threw their support behind Putin, who promised to restore stability and sought to resurrect Moscow’s power.

Iran’s problems with the West also have a long history. The United States supported a coup d’état in 1953 that overthrew Iran’s elected prime minister and empowered the country’s Western-friendly monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah launched an economic modernization drive called the White Revolution in the early 1960s, promising that it would deliver Iranians strong growth and industrial development.

But many of the benefits accrued to the upper and middle classes. Millions of poorer, rural Iranians saw their safety nets collapse. The country as a whole was disoriented, which helped prompt the 1979 revolution and bring Iran’s Islamist regime to power.

Both Iran and Russia, then, share an obvious, deep-seated distrust of the Western order (and of Western-backed reforms). But the resemblances between them do not stop there.

The structure of each country’s regime is also quite similar, featuring personalistic dictators, state-led economies, and strong intelligence services. In Russia, that leader is Putin. Each has a hybrid economy, with major industries such as energy and banking tightly controlled by security officers and private owners allowed to run businesses at lower levels.

Iran, for its part, has been run by Khamenei and his networks for over 30 years. Its main enterprises are either state owned or state run, and they are usually under the thumb of top security officials linked to the clerical establishment. In both countries, the regime buys the support of the working class through generous subsidies and payments. It buys the support of many middle-class workers by employing them in state-run enterprises.

Washington, well aware of how these regimes are structured, has issued broad-based sanctions aimed at making their systems unsustainable. But paradoxically, Iran’s experience suggests that sanctions help reinforce them by making it hard for anyone to develop economic power outside the elites. Ordinary Iranians have become more dependent on the state for resources.

The elites, in turn, evade economic restrictions by bringing in wealth through smuggling networks. Perhaps that is why the Kremlin is trying to emulate the Iranian experience. Moscow has borrowed Iran’s practice of using shell companies and ship-to-ship oil transfers in international waters. In July 2024, Moscow’s Ministry of Education even introduced the study of Iran’s economy into Russian high schools as the country geared up for possible decades of sanctions.

PARTNERS IN CRIME

Khamenei and Putin’s military partnership predates Russia’s invasion. The two forged military ties in 2015, when Russia began its intervention in Syria to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Tehran, which was already providing support to Damascus, granted Russia access to a military base inside Iran from which it could launch airstrikes. The countries also established a joint military commission to facilitate high-level engagement between their generals, personnel training, and arms procurement.

But since 2022, Moscow and Tehran have taken their defense cooperation to a whole new level. Iran is now supplying Russia with combat drones, ballistic missiles, artillery shells, small-arms ammunition, antitank rockets, mortar bombs, and glide bombs. Iran also helped Russia build a drone factory in Russia’s Tatarstan region. In return, Russia has agreed to send Tehran fighter jets, attack helicopters, jet trainers, and radar systems. It has shared cyber-capabilities and intelligence as well.

Iran and Russia are cooperating on far more than just conventional military matters. In fact, it seems as if anything goes in pursuit of dethroning the West. The Kremlin has shared secret information and technology to help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. Russia has leveraged its UN Security Council seat to shield Iran from accountability for its destabilizing actions and violations of international law.

Moscow has shared intelligence and provided weapons to Iranian-backed groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The countries are exchanging advice about how to crush protests, undermine opposition organization efforts, and surveil their citizens. Russia has even provided Iran with advanced surveillance technology.

Economic cooperation between the countries is also on the rise. In 2023, Tehran signed a free trade agreement with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and accepted an invitation to join the BRICS, a bloc founded by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009 that South Africa joined the following year. Russia boosted its grain exports to Iran.

Both countries set up an interbank transfer mechanism so they can directly trade in rubles and rials, avoiding Western sanctions that would prevent them from using euros or dollars. They have discussed creating what they call the International North-South Transport Corridor—a ship, rail, and road route connecting India, Iran, and Russia.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Iran and Russia may well draw closer in the coming years, but greater cooperation is not guaranteed. For all it has going for it, the Iranian-Russian alliance contains inherent contradictions, mutual distrust, and competing interests that could undermine its durability.

One of the biggest obstacles is Iran and Russia’s shared history. The two states, geographically tied by the Caspian Sea, spent centuries as imperial rivals. Soviet troops occupied part of Iran during World War II, and Iran was an important part of the Western camp during much of the Cold War. That changed, of course, after the 1979 revolution, but Iran’s new clerical leadership had little interest in aligning with the avowedly secular Soviet Union.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s first supreme leader, hated Washington. But he was hardly fonder of Moscow, which he called “the lesser Satan.”

Once the Cold War ended, the states reached sometimes awkward accommodations in the post-Soviet sphere. Iran turned a cold shoulder to Chechen Muslims fighting for independence from Russia in the early 1990s, despite the Iranian constitution’s demand of “fraternal commitment to all Muslims and unsparing support to the oppressed.”

The two eyed each other warily as Armenia and Azerbaijan skirmished in the early 2000s. In some ways, they are competing today. Ever since the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, in 2020, Moscow has been trying to help Baku create a corridor connecting Azerbaijan to Turkey. Tehran, meanwhile, has tried to stop it, fearing that the corridor would cut off its direct access to Armenia and diminish its regional influence.

Iran and Russia do not see eye to eye in the Middle East, either. Iran and Israel, for example, are avowed adversaries. But Russia has a strong working relationship with Israel. It is true that since the war in Gaza began last year, Putin has been critical of Israel, even inviting a Hamas delegation to Russia. Russian weapons have also made their way to many of Israel’s regional adversaries.

But more than a million Israelis are Russian speakers, providing Moscow with a foothold in Israel and a reason to prioritize Israeli security. Israel has, in turn, been solicitous of Russian interests in Syria. Russia has also pursued closer ties with the Middle East’s Arab countries in an effort to tap into the Gulf region’s capital and move sanctioned Russian capital through Gulf banking institutions.

These needs naturally make Russia more sensitive to the Arab world’s many complaints about Iranian conduct.

Iran and Russia do not merely have different geopolitical interests. For all their talk of forming commercial partnerships, both states are ultimately dominated by their hydrocarbon industries. And because Western sanctions limit their ability to sell to the whole world, they are forced to hawk oil in the same handful of markets.

The competition may soon intensify: the biggest of those markets, China, is experiencing an economic slowdown that may undermine its demand for energy.

Finally, on a more fundamental level, Iran and Russia have different strategic cultures. For much of the twentieth century, Moscow led one of two global superpowers, and it continues to have a historic sense of exceptionalism.

Although Iranians foster hegemonic aspirations, those aspirations are profoundly regional. And more than dreams of dominance, Iran’s leaders are driven by resentment. For centuries, Iranians have felt exploited by more powerful states—including Russia. In the 2010s, after all, Moscow cooperated with Western sanctions to pressure Iran into curbing its nuclear program.

THE TIES THAT DIVIDE

Right now, the instinct in Washington is to lump Iran and Russia together, treating them as some sort of durable axis that threatens American interests. But given the two countries’ many differences, U.S. officials should treat them as what they are: partners of convenience. That means, rather than lumping the two together, Washington should patiently look for ways to push them apart.

The United States can start by getting smart about sanctions. Personalistic dictatorships are more sensitive than other dictatorships to the sanctions-induced loss of external revenues. Reliant on personal patronage rather than formal institutions, they require a constant stream of revenue, which can easily be targeted. In Iran and Russia, these revenues come overwhelmingly from fossil fuel exports.

The Biden administration, however, has prioritized the stability of energy markets over fully squeezing Iran and Russia, so the two states have managed to keep up production. But in a world now awash in spare capacity, the United States can afford to be more aggressive about reducing their hydrocarbon income.

If Washington steps up enforcement of sanctions, it will increase the risk premium China will demand for buying their oil, thereby reducing both Iran’s and Russia’s revenues. Tighter enforcement of the price cap the United States and other G-7 countries imposed on Russian oil in 2022 would do the same, as would any other U.S. efforts to nudge oil prices lower.

Similarly, the United States should highlight the other ways in which the two countries’ interests conflict. Targeted information campaigns, for example, should expose how Russia backs Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ priorities in the Middle East over Iran’s. The West should also highlight Russia’s enduring ties with Israel.

In some cases, the West can play up these facts by declassifying information that exposes these tensions.

None of this means the West’s current suite of policies is failing. The United States and its partners are right to undermine Iran’s access to critical goods and technology, which Tehran then reexports to Russia. They should develop a better, more holistic strategy for blocking Russian support to Iranian proxies. But treating the two countries as a single unit is not enough to limit their combined power.

Washington must pit them against each other as best it can. For centuries, their relationship has been strained, and for good reason. The U.S. strategy should be to help heighten those tensions, not override them.