Iran’s Russia Problem

Iran’s newish president and foreign minister could hardly be more different in demeanor. President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks informally, often goes off script, and loves to crack jokes. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a career diplomat who earned his Ph.D. in Britain, chooses his words with painstaking precision. But the two men have been saying the same things about the direction they want to see foreign policy take in Iran.

The pitch goes something like this: We would like to make amends with the United States and Europe so that we can get the sanctions lifted from our economy. But we will not sacrifice our relations with Russia and China—the partners that have stood by us. Nor will we give up our support for the Axis of Resistance, the collection of Arab anti-Israel militias that plague the West and many regional Arab countries.

In his first press conference as president last Monday, Pezeshkian put it bluntly: “Those guys sanctioned us,” he said, referring to the West. “These guys helped us,” referring to Russia and China. But he also promised a peaceful approach to the West, even suggesting that the United States and Iran could be “brothers.” A few days earlier, Araghchi said in a televised interview: “We approach relations with Europe from a new angle and a new perspective,” but “our priority lies elsewhere.”

This is a vision riven with contradictions. Pezeshkian has been clear (as has his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) that Tehran’s priority is solving its dire economic problems. Doing so requires increasing foreign investment and getting Iran off the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based anti-money-laundering outfit. And these things will not happen unless Iran negotiates with Western powers over its nuclear program, its support for the Axis, and its arming of Russia in its war in Ukraine. In simpler words, if Iran wants to get to its domestic priorities, the West must become its foreign-policy priority.

Pezeshkian’s ascent to the presidency likely sounded alarm bells in Moscow, because the diplomats around him are known to be skeptical of Iran’s ties to Moscow and Beijing. Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister who now serves as vice president for strategic affairs, is openly critical of those who tie Iran too closely to Russia, saying that the relationship limits Tehran’s options. His chief achievement as Iran’s top diplomat was the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and five other world powers, which President Donald Trump withdrew from three years later. Zarif’s No. 2 in the talks that led to that agreement was Araghchi. Another member of that negotiating team is now Araghchi’s No. 2. A fourth heads the parliamentary nuclear subcommittee.

In short, Iran’s West-facing faction is back in the saddle. Of course, none of these people calls the shots; Khamenei does. But the fact that the supreme leader allowed Pezeshkian to run for and win the presidency in the first place suggests that he, too, sees the need to deal with the West.

[Jonathan Rauch: The world is realigning ]

What that means for Moscow is less certain. The new government has made some loud protestations of friendship with Russia, but these seem meant partly to reassure a jittery Vladimir Putin and partly to play hard to get with the West. Pezeshkian has also sought to mollify the Kremlin by appointing Mehdi Sanayi, a former ambassador to Russia, as a vice chief of staff. Sanayi is fluent in Russian and holds a Ph.D. from the country’s prestigious Academy of Sciences—making him a rarity among Iranian officials, who far more commonly speak English and hold European or American degrees.

But within the power structure, critics of Iran’s relationship with Russia seem to have found new courage since the new government took power. Some point to the fact that in recent years, parts of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have propounded a Russia-facing policy called “Look East”—and then benefited mightily from military deals with China and Russia. “Russia toys with Iran as a playing card and supporting Russia doesn’t serve national interests and only benefits Iranian Russophiles,” Afshar Soleimani, a former ambassador to Baku, said in a recent interview. “I don’t blame Russia. It’s our fault that we are fooled by it.”

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a former head of Iran’s parliamentary foreign-policy committee, is perhaps the chief Russia skeptic in Iran. Questioning the notion that Russia and China should be thanked for trading with Iran despite Western-imposed sanctions, he recently said: “They weren’t ‘our friend in the hard times’ as some said. They abused us. If we have a rational foreign policy, we shouldn’t put ourselves in a situation to permanently need countries like China and Russia.” Zarif and Pezeshkian aired similar notions on the campaign trail, but Falahatpisheh went further, suggesting that those Iranians who advocate for ties with Beijing and Moscow have a personal interest in keeping Iran under sanctions so that they can benefit from the shadowy oil trade.

Russia is not, in fact, a natural partner for Iran. If anything, it’s been a boogeyman to Iranians for hundreds of years, starting with Moscow’s colonial designs on Persia in the 18th and 19th centuries. For a very long time, Iranians considered Russia the main threat to their country’s sovereignty. And lately, Russia has given Iranians renewed cause for concern by stepping on basic security priorities that are matters of broad national consensus.

First, in joint statements with the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, Russia backed the position of the United Arab Emirates on three disputed islands in the Persian Gulf. Iran considers its sovereignty over these islands nonnegotiable; the UAE also claims them and wants a diplomatic process to adjudicate the matter. But more consequential was Putin’s trip last month to the Republic of Azerbaijan, his first in six years.

Baku’s relations with Tehran have been rocky. The gas-rich Turkic state has close ties with Israel and sometimes riles up separatist sentiments among Iranian Azeris, who make up more than 15 percent of the population and include both Khamenei and Pezeshkian. Alarmingly for Iran, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov backed Baku’s demands for a transit corridor to connect mainland Azerbaijan with its autonomous exclave, Nakhchivan. This corridor would run along Iran’s sole border with Armenia, effectively blocking it and cutting off an important access point to Europe.

[Arash Azizi: Iran’s supreme leader is worried]

Following Lavrov’s remarks, Iran’s foreign ministry and several Iranian officials vehemently protested. A conservative outlet owned by the judiciary attacked the corridor as a “dream that will never be realized.” Iran’s foreign-policy council, an authoritative body appointed by Khamenei, has criticized the project in the past—suggesting in an article on its website that the corridor is the design of “the United States, Britain, and international Zionists.”

Could these complaints help give the Pezeshkian administration the space to lessen Iran’s reliance on Russia—and perhaps make a deal with the West? Maybe Iran could even make its ties with Russia a bargaining chip, as the United States and its allies are surely keen to weaken them.

Even if Pezeshkian wants to do this, he will have to contend with the influence of the IRGC and the military, says Nicole Grajewski, the author of a forthcoming book on Iran-Russia ties and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Russians know this, she told me: “They’ve observed how each time an Iranian president has come to power with the promise of better relations with the West, it’s either been obstructed by internal factors, such as the hard-liners or the IRGC, or by external events, like during the Trump administration.”

Meanwhile, she noted, despite the “real and deep tension, plus distrust” between Iran and Russia, the military and technical relationship between the two countries has grown extremely close. “Iran is now integrated into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” Grajewski pointed out, with real implications for European security.

During his televised interview, Araghchi acknowledged that the Ukraine war has “complicated” Iran’s relations with Europe. But he called for “a new direction … based on mutual respect and dignity.” Iran was willing to listen to Europe’s security concerns if Europe would listen to Iran’s, he added.

Pezeshkian was, again, more forthright, promising on Monday that Iran wasn’t after “exporting its revolution” and repeatedly pledging good-faith attempts at peace with the West and with neighboring countries. He even waxed philosophical. “Who knows how we’ve found the opportunity to live in this galaxy, on this little blue ball called Earth,” he said. “We should enjoy this life instead of fighting all the time … We can create an Earth on which everybody lives happily.”

[Michael Young: The Axis of Resistance has been gathering strength ]

Such is likely to be the tone of Pezeshkian’s rhetoric during his visit to New York this week—both in his address to the United Nations General Assembly and in the many meetings he plans to hold among American civil society. The talk of universal harmony doesn’t sit comfortably with Iran’s track record of repressing its own population, arming anti-Israel terror groups, and aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it does signal a shift from just a year ago, when the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi fulminated at a UN podium. It might be narrow, but if you look hard enough, you’ll see a new opening in Tehran.