Are Russia and Iran friends or foes?

A budding courtship between Russia and Iran is an unwelcome development for the West in general and the United States in particular.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used a rare foreign trip on Tuesday to hold talks in Tehran with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi, as well as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

The fact that Russia and Iran are competing energy producers is likely to place limits on any deeper partnership.

Here's a look at some of the key questions that their developing relationship poses.

CAN IRAN HELP RUSSIA IN THE UKRAINE WAR?

US officials have said Iran is preparing to help supply Russia with several hundred unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, including some that are capable of firing weapons, but neither country has confirmed it. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted by RIA news agency as saying Putin had not discussed the issue with Iran's leaders.

"Russia deepening an alliance with Iran to kill Ukrainians is something that the whole world should look at and see as a profound threat," US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week.

Ukraine has used Turkish-supplied Bayraktar drones to lethal effect in targeting Russian units and destroying huge quantities of tanks and other armored vehicles. Jack Watling, a war expert at the RUSI think-tank in London, said Iranian drones would be useful to Russia for both reconnaissance and as loitering munitions that can bide their time in locating and engaging suitable targets.

"Beyond supplying UAVs Iran can also help Russia evade sanctions and potentially collaborate on the manufacture of weapons systems that are less dependent upon supply chains through Western countries," he said.

WHAT CAN RUSSIA LEARN FROM IRAN ON SANCTIONS?

Iran has many years of experience of defending itself against Western sanctions over its disputed nuclear program. "The Russians see Iran as being highly experienced at, and a potentially valuable partner, in evading Western sanctions," said Watling.

Russia, meanwhile, has been hit with waves of sanctions against banks, businesses and individuals over the war in Ukraine. Both countries therefore lack access to Western technology and capital, said Janis Kluge of the SWP think-tank in Berlin.

"There might be some lessons that Russia can learn from Iran... In exchange, Russia could offer military goods and possibly raw materials or grain," he said. Russia is already a major supplier of wheat to Tehran.

With some Russian banks cut off from the SWIFT international payments system, Moscow is developing an alternative in which Iranian banks could be included, Kluge said.

More broadly, Iran is part of a wider group of countries - also including China, India, Latin America and Arab and African nations - with which Russia is forging stronger ties in a bid to prove its claim that it can thrive under sanctions and that these will only rebound on the West.

HOW CAN RUSSIA AND IRAN COOPERATE ON ENERGY?

This is potentially a sensitive question, both countries are oil and gas producers, and competition between them has intensified since the start of the Ukraine war as Russia has switched more of its oil exports to China and India at knock-down prices.

"On the economic dimension, the war has significantly worsened their relationship. Moscow is eating Tehran’s lunch in commodity markets and has even fewer resources to throw at projects in Iran," said Henry Rome, deputy head of research at Eurasia Group.

Coinciding with Putin's visit, however, the National Iranian Oil Company and Russia's Gazprom signed a memorandum of understanding worth around US$40 billion under which Gazprom will help NIOC develop two gas fields and six oil fields, as well as taking part in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and construction of gas export pipelines.

WILL ANYTHING CHANGE IN THE IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS?

The Ukraine war has changed Moscow’s approach towards talks on reviving the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

Eleven months of talks to restore the deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program, had reached their final stages in March. But they were thrown into disarray over a last-minute Russian demand for written guarantees from Washington that Western sanctions targeting Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine would not affect its trade with Iran.

Although Russia quickly retreated under Iranian pressure, diplomatic momentum for an agreement was lost. The talks have stalled since then over various remaining issues.

Whether the deal can get back on track will be one measure of the impact of the rapprochement between Putin and Iran's leaders.

"Russia’s interference in the JCPOA talks was a significant reversal of the traditional Russian approach and probably further fanned suspicions in Tehran about Moscow’s reliability and trustworthiness," said Rome of Eurasia Group.

Is west ready to bargain with new Iranian president?

For years, Iranian moderates, such as former President Hassan Rouhani, tried but failed to reach an understanding with the West. Now, a hardliner is in charge. Does President Ebrahim Raisi’s election spell the end of what Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei once called Iran’s ‘heroic flexibility’ in dealing with the West? In the wake of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the question now matters even more.

The answer is yes as well as no. Raisi is not going to take up the mantle of attempting to reconcile with the West. The ideological confrontation with the United States is central to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s fundamentalist identity.

Moreover, both moderates and radicals in Iran still view the strategy of building a proxy-supported Iranian ‘empire’ across the Middle East—advanced by the late military commander Qassem Suleimani, who was assassinated by the US last year—as vital to uphold and advance the Islamic Revolution’s purpose. No true rapprochement is possible between the West and Iran, especially now that hardliners are fully running the show.

It’s also worth noting that ‘heroic flexibility’ never applied to Iran’s dealings with Israel—another fundamental bugbear. Raisi’s administration will certainly maintain Iran’s shadow war with the ‘Zionist entity’.

Iran’s recent attack on an Israeli-managed cargo ship near Oman in the Arabian Sea has been viewed by some as a kind of strategic shift—or, at least, escalation—as it represented a blatant violation of freedom of navigation in international waters. But, in truth, it is merely a continuation of a war in which both Iran and Israel have never shown much regard for international norms.

Israel assumed that, by not using its own merchant fleet—99% of its foreign trade is handled by international ships, it could avoid such assaults. But just as Iran’s forces in Syria are vulnerable to Israeli attacks, Israeli-linked entities in the Arabian Sea, a theatre thousands of miles from the country’s coast, but close to Iran’s mainland are vulnerable to Iranian attacks.

Iran will not forgo the opportunities this represents, not only to impose direct costs on Israel, but also to undermine the Abraham Accords, which, by establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab states, are viewed by Iran as a strategic setback. Already, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are reaching out to Iran, out of concern that US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy in the region won’t protect their interests.

But none of this means that Iran is gearing up for a direct confrontation with the West. Raisi has inherited an economy on life support. The Covid-19 pandemic and Western sanctions have cost Iran about 1.5 million jobs. Moreover, oil and gas export revenues have plummeted; annual inflation has reached almost 50%, with the cost of basic foods soaring by nearly 60%.

Clearly, Khamenei’s 2011 vision of a self-reliant Iranian ‘resistance economy’ hasn’t been realized. Furthermore, now that Raisi is President, Iran’s hardliners can no longer blame pro-Western moderates for Iran’s economic woes. To stave off potential unrest, Iran’s government must stem the economy’s decline by persuading the international community to ease sanctions, which will require it to reach some sort of understanding with the US over its nuclear program.

Russia and China are Iran’s more natural allies, but neither country will give Iran the resources it needs to sustain its costly proxy wars or reverse its economic decline. China, in particular, views Iran as a pawn in its broader chess match with the US, one that it would willingly sacrifice for, say, an agreement on vital trade issues.

An Iranian empire in the Middle East is simply not a strategic priority for China. At the same time, Iranian fundamentalists can’t be too happy with their Chinese ally’s brutal crackdown on its Muslim Uyghur population. The bilateral relationship thus does not represent a way out of Iran’s current predicament.

A new nuclear agreement is an existential imperative for Iran. And, as much as he dislikes the idea of striking a deal with the US, Khamenei understands this. Remaining on the threshold of nuclear breakout, a position it attained following America’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, without actually crossing it may be Iran’s current bargaining position. This is what Raisi might have meant when, prior to his election, he upheld Iran’s need to return to the JCPOA in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

But the real bone of contention lies not in whether the parties are willing to go back to the old JCPOA, but the terms on which Iran would accept the US demand for a new, long-term deal once the JCPOA expires. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has unrealistically called for a ‘longer and stronger’ accord, one that stops Iran from amassing nuclear material for generations, halts its missile tests and ends its support of terrorist groups.

What is clear is that Washington should do all it can to encourage Iran’s ‘heroic flexibility’. After America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the last thing the US needs is even more chaos in the Middle East. Likewise, the victory in Afghanistan of the Sunni Taliban, staunch ideological enemies of Shia Iran, should strengthen Iran’s commitment to avoid stoking conflict with the West. Now might be as good an opportunity as the US is going to get to reach a lasting nuclear agreement with Iran.