Partnership without Commitments: Features of Russian-Iranian Relations in Recent Decades

Abstract

The article examines the features of Soviet-Iranian and further Russian-Iranian relations, starting with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 to the present. The paper reveals the main stages and events in bilateral relations with particular emphasis on bilateral cooperation on the issue of Syria and the consideration of Iran’s interests in this country, including economic ones. The author attempts to determine the grade of the achieved bilateral relations established at soviet times as confrontational, although in the very last years of the existence of the Soviet Union they began to improve. The tendency to improve and intensify relations continued after the collapse of the USSR. However, Russian-Iranian relations at the present stage, on the whole, cannot be characterized as allied. Although in the case of Syria, one can indeed observe their alliance, nevertheless, in general, relations between Russia and Iran keep far from being deep enough, and in a number of cases in recent decades there has been rivalry or even conflict between the two countries, as, for example, in the issuance of Russia’s refusal to supply Iran with air S-300 defense systems. Nevertheless, given the external pressure on both countries, along with the growing attention to traditional values, there is a certain likelihood of expanding and deepening Russian-Iranian relations to the level of allies.