Will Russia stand up for its ally Iran and how can Moscow benefit?

Euronews

4 hours ago

Russia's foreign ministry slammed on Sunday the overnight US air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, calling it 'an irresponsible decision to subject the territory of a sovereign state to missile and bomb strikes, no matter what arguments it is presented with' — all the while Moscow itself is intensifying its attacks on Ukraine.
The Kremlin says the US attack 'blatantly violates international law, the UN Charter, and the resolutions of the UN Security Council, which has previously unambiguously qualified such actions as inadmissible' adding that 'It is particularly alarming that the strikes were carried out by a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council'.
Russia, the permanent member of the UN Security Council itself, has been waging its unprovoked all-out war against Ukraine since February 2022, bombing Ukrainian cities and attacking Ukraine on the ground.
'We urge to stop the aggression, to step up efforts to create conditions for returning the situation to the political and diplomatic track,' the Moscow statement said, referring to the US strikes.
At the St Petersburg forum before Washington's strike, Vladimir Putin said that Iran had not asked for help since the beginning of Israel's air campaign.
The Russian president added that the comprehensive partnership treaty between Moscow and Tehran has no articles related to the military sphere, which is ironic, given Russian production of Iranian developed Shahed-136 drones (aka the Geranium-2).
Euronews spoke with Nikita Smagin, an orientalist and author of the book "All Iran. The paradoxes of life in an autocracy under sanctions" about what is at stake for the Kremlin.
Smagin says the Russian side has previously emphasised that its alliance with Iran is not a 'military one' and Moscow is therefore not obliged to provide it with military assistance.
"It is logical to expect that Russia will not interfere in what is happening, because it does not want to risk for the sake of Iran the aggravation of the situation with Israel and the United States," the expert says.
Smagin notes that Tehran's decision not to request military intervention from Moscow before the US strikes is not surprising.
"The Islamic Republic was built from the very beginning on the ideas of sovereignty," he says, adding that one of the driving ideas behind the restructuring of the Iranian state was to put an end to the interference of foreign players, primarily the US and the UK, in Iran's internal affairs.
"In this sense, Iran has never turned to Russia for help and is not turning to Russia now because it is afraid of losing some sovereignty, of giving up some of its sovereignty to Russia, as was the case with Bashar al-Assad," Smagin says.
But the situation could change.
"If only because Putin drew attention to the fact that he does not even want to think about the assassination, the destruction of Khamenei, it is obvious that these issues are somewhat disturbing to him," the expert explains.
'The fate of authoritarian leaders hurts Russia'
According to US President Donald Trump, Washington knows "exactly" where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is "hiding".
Trump also said that the Iranian leader is "an easy target, but they will not kill him, at least not yet".
If the Islamic Republic's regime falls or if it comes to physically destroying the Ayatollah, how will the Kremlin react to this? What would it mean for the Russian authorities?
"In general, we see that the deaths in revolutionary processes, the destruction of heads of authoritarian states in general hurts the Russian side. We remember how Putin reacted to the assassination of Gaddafi," notes Nikita Smagin.
The rebels were primarily operating there, but not without the assistance of foreign forces, including British intelligence and the Emirates. But nevertheless, all this looked like a serious "wake-up call" for Putin. And, apparently, this was one of the reasons why he began to change his positioning in the international arena.
According to the analyst, if the Islamic Republic collapses, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may well be granted asylum in Russia.
"This is already an established practice. I think it is not that it is excluded. But if Khamenei is eliminated, it will not cause any joy in the Kremlin. They believe that killing leaders is a red line, beyond which in fact Israel has already crossed. It has already eliminated Hezbollah leaders, for example," he says.
'It will be easier to draw up the budget'
The new crisis in the Middle East may hit Russia's influence in the region, but the sudden escalation has brought the Kremlin some good news. At the G7 summit in Canada, for example, it was decided not to lower the price threshold for Russian oil so as not to further destabilise the market.
Since the end of 2022, one of the key aspects of leverage on Moscow has been the establishment of price ceilings for Russian oil at $60 per barrel.
Three and a half years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU has proposed lowering the price ceiling to $45 per barrel, but it will have to wait for now.
"If we take disintegration in Iran as a whole, or rather regime change, because disintegration (of the country) is already a concomitant, then, of course, it threatens Russia's interests in the long term," says Nikita Smagin.
"The Kremlin, of course, expects to benefit from this in the short term: oil prices will go up very seriously. The worse the situation gets, the higher the prices will be and the easier it will be for the [Russian] budget to be drawn up - this year, by the looks of it, there could be problems with it," the analyst explains.
According to Smagin, Russia will benefit in the current moment, but in the longer term, regime change and "turning Iran into some permanent point of instability threatens, of course, Russia's strategy in the Middle East, because a lot of effort has been invested in Iran."
"Iran has been a reliable partner of the Kremlin on many fronts, " he says.
"A lot of projects, and strategically important ones at that, were planned to be conducted through Iran, for example, the [transport corridor] North-South project, a possible gas hub. This, of course, is all for the future, but nevertheless, in the event [of the regime's collapse] there will be no possibility of realising it. In the long term, it will be a loss and a setback for the Russian side."
'The peak of Russia's military cooperation with Iran has long passed'
In more than three years of full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has succeeded in "localising" the production of Iranian-designed drones.
According to Nikita Smagin, Iran's importance as a supplier of Shahed-136 drones is in the past. The peak of military co-operation between the two countries came in 2022. As the expert notes, at the beginning of last year, up to 90% of components were not Iranian. "Only the engines were supplied from Iran. Everything else was made by Russia," he adds.
"Even if localisation is not 100 percent now, it is very close to that. I think Russia will find ways to replace that, not to mention that the Shaheds don't play as big a role as they used to."
"Still, there is a huge amount of in-house development. Russia has been investing in drones during this time," Smagin explains.
"Moreover: even if we're talking about the Shahed specifically, it's not even strongly Iranian anymore. The Geran-1 and Geran-2 drones are very much redesigned, because the Iranian version was not as effective as many expected," he notes.
In an interview with Kommersant, Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, describes the Shaheds' flight characteristics as "primitive" and "allowing them to be shot down en masse even with 7.62 mm anti-aircraft machine guns."
He also writes of the "moped" engine sound, "alerting the entire neighbourhood to the drone's arrival."
'In Israel, Russia's role as a mediator is looked upon with no apparent antipathy'
As Hannah Notte, a political scientist and expert at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, writes, Russia has always had limitations on how far it can go in supporting Iran.
"The Kremlin's obsessive anti-Western agenda has raised the Islamic republic's profile as a partner, but Putin has other interests in the region - such as a long-standing, albeit complicated, relationship with Israel and the need to coordinate oil prices with OPEC - so he has been mindful of Israel's and the Gulf states' red lines when it comes to defence cooperation with Tehran," Notte wrote in a column for US outlet The Atlantic.
Nikita Smagin believes that in the current conflict between Iran and Israel, Russia is no longer an "indispensable" mediator.
"When the nuclear negotiations were going on, when Trump was trying to sign a nuclear deal with Iran, here Russia could act as an indispensable mediator," he says.
"It was actually the only party that had the technical capability and was ready to export surplus uranium from Iran, pre-weapons grade or enriched beyond the required minimum per cent. Now, apparently, this issue is off the agenda".
At the same time, despite the fact that relations between Israel and Russia, which became the first country in the world to receive a Hamas delegation after the 7 October attacks officially, have deteriorated, according to Smagin, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem look at Russia's role as a mediator "without any obvious antipathy".
As Smagin notes, even after Moscow's invasion of 2022 and the subsequent wave of immigration in an attempt to avoid mobilisation, "a large number of agents of anti-Russian influence have appeared in the Jewish state, people who moved from Russia and have a very negative attitude to the Russian authorities and are obviously the backbone of anti-Russian sentiments in Israel."