In Tehran, the slogan is displayed on the pediment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a magnificent calligraphy on a blue background: “neither East nor West, the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Since the mullahs’ revolution in 1979, this sentence has structured Iranian diplomacy, independent of the great powers, fiercely non-aligned.
Forty years later, the formula remains plastered, but it has lost its luster. While the logic of blocs is resurfacing, Iran has chosen its side and is fully in line with the Beijing-Moscow axis. “For Iranian conservatives, the West is sinking into decadence, like ancient Rome, and the future belongs to China and Russia,” said Farid Vahid, Middle East specialist at the Fondation Jean -Jaurès. As a result, the Iranian state has sealed a very strategic alliance with Moscow, which will have lasting consequences on the economy, defense and the energy market.”
China and Russia, lifelines of the Iranian economy
The stunt of Donald Trump, out of the nuclear agreement in 2018, is not foreign to it. Suffocated by sanctions for four years, Iran sought relief from Beijing, then from the Kremlin. In March 2021, the Islamic Republic thus signed an unprecedented cooperation pact with China, valid for a period of twenty-five years and relating mainly to armaments and energy.
Then, last July, a few hours before a visit by Tsar Putin to Tehran, the Russian giant Gazprom concluded a memorandum of understanding $40 billion to rehabilitate Iran’s energy infrastructure. “This agreement allows Gazprom to exercise direct control over the Middle East energy market, explains researcher Nima Khorrami in a note for the Middle East Institute. In the future, this means that Moscow will use this leverage to ensure that Iran is never in a position to harm Russia’s energy interests.”
The subject is far from being anecdotal for Europe. In lack of Russian gas, the Old Continent hopes that an Iranian nuclear agreement will lift the sanctions affecting the regime and that it will thus be able to release its enormous quantities of hydrocarbons. What relieve the global energy market before a perilous winter. “But the regime’s agreements with Moscow complicate the equation, raises Farid Vahid. The Russians will not be happy to see Tehran flood Europe with gas, they will not let it happen. It is likely that in the event of a nuclear agreement , Iranian hydrocarbon exports primarily concern Asia.”
Tehran’s alliances are also beginning to weigh on the war in Ukraine. In mid-July, American intelligence warned of the purchase of “hundreds of Iranian drones” by Russia, which is struggling to win the battle in the air. Another worrying fact for Westerners: in early August, they witnessed, dumbfounded, the launch of an Iranian intelligence satellite by the Russians.
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Dario Ingiusto / L’Express
Two states that have become pariahs on the international scene
However, the rapprochement with Russia was not natural for Tehran. Iranians keep in mind the countless wars between the Russian Empire and Persia in the 19th and then at the beginning of the 20th century, but also the military support offered by Moscow to Saddam Hussein during the war between Iran and Iraq, from 1980 to 1988. It took another conflict to bring the two camps closer in the 2010s: the civil war in Syria, where both Iran and Russia decided to keep Bashar al-Assad in power by all possible means. Today, they each occupy a part of the country.
Tehran and Moscow also share the first two places in the ranking of the most sanctioned nations in the world. With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is also on the first step, ahead of Iran. “International sanctions have brought Moscow and Tehran closer together, becoming two pariah states, judge Yonatan Freeman, professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Iranians know perfectly well what the Russians have been going through since February, they can identify with their situation.”
If there is an agreement on its nuclear program, Tehran should see its international isolation ease. Without giving up on his new friendships.