Here’s the full interview that I gave to Newsweek’s Tom O’Connor, excerpts of which were included in his article about “What A Trump-Putin Detente Means for Russia and Iran’s Partnership”.
1. Russia and Iran have pursued closer ties in recent years while they have also faced conflict with parties supported by the United States. Now there is hope that a peaceful settlement may be reached for the Ukraine issue, while the situation remains tense in the Middle East. Do you feel that Russia could prove helpful in supporting diplomacy as it relates to the Iranian nuclear issue given President Putin’s good standing with the leadership of Iran, the U.S. and the Arab nations in the region?
I agree on both counts that a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian issue appears likely and that Russia can then encourage Iran to reach its own such settlement with the US over the nuclear issue. The ongoing Russian-US talks can be interpreted as driven by the mutual desire for a “New Détente” brought about by their exhaustion after three years of fighting an intense proxy war. It’s therefore natural that resolving one issue can have a domino effect by seeing Russia and the US cooperate on other issues.
The Iranian nuclear one is important for both of them but in different ways: Russia is concerned about what the US and Israel might do if Iran doesn’t agree to a new nuclear deal, which could destabilize Russia’s southern periphery, while the US is concerned about Iran allegedly developing nukes. If they reach a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, especially one that leads to strategic cooperation on resources like Arctic gas and rare earth minerals, then each would have an interest in helping the other on this.
To that end, Russia could share with Iran what it’s learned from engaging with Trump 2.0, namely his administration’s very different worldview when compared to his predecessor’s. Given the trust between Russia and Iran at the national and leadership levels, coupled with what could by then the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian issue that leads to a “New Détente” between Russia and the US, Iran might very well be receptive to this. It also helps that President Pezeshkian is considered to be a “reformist”.
In American political parlance, this means that he’s a “moderate” and is thus already predisposed in principle to talking with the US in pursuit of pragmatic deals, which could first take the form of phased sanctions relief. In particular, the US could begin by waiving sanctions for Russian and Indian companies that cooperate with Iran via the North-South Transport Corridor as a trust-building measure, which could then expand to the level of rescinding direct sanctions on a step-by-step basis if a deal is reached.
2. How has the fall of the former Syrian government of President Assad affected the relationship between Russia and Iran, given their shared experience in the Syrian Arab Republic?
Russia and Iran cooperated on fighting terrorism in Syria but also arguably competed with one another there as well over which of them would be the Assad Government’s top partner. Russia air support was pivotal in defeating ISIS, but then Moscow tabled a draft constitution in January 2017 during the first Astana Summit that Damascus essentially discarded and made no progress on. That led to Iran courting Syria, which expanded its role in the “Resistance Axis” as a counterweight to potential Russian pressure.
The reasons behind the Assad Government’s downfall are complex and still being debated among experts, but few would argue that his refusal to make pragmatic concessions to the opposition under Russian mediation and his armed forces’ inability to adapt to the times were fatal in combination. The years of peace that followed the last ceasefire were essentially wasted. Part of this, however, might have to do with Syria clumsily “balancing” between its competing Russian and Iranian patrons.
Had it picked one and stuck with them, then that senior partner could have taken full responsibility for the diplomatic processes required for reaching a lasting peace as well as the military reforms required for defending against the rebels if they violated the ceasefire, yet that never happened. Assad didn’t want to dump Russia since it provided international legitimacy and development assistance while dumping Iran was never considered due to the importance of the IRGC and Hezbollah’s ground presence.
If Assad chose Iran over Russia, then Israel might have preemptively “demilitarized” Syria like it ultimately did in mid-December shortly after his fall out of fear that it would turn into a “terrorist state”, while choosing Russia over Iran could have forced him into a peace deal that he didn’t want to make. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too, but in the end, neither of his patrons was able to save him since each concluded on their own that the opportunities that he lost made his government unsalvageable.
Assad’s fall might therefore have taught Russia and Iran the importance of more candid discussions with one another about sensitive issues such as their relations with third countries. Instead of ignoring their competition in Syria and discouraging their media and foreign supporters from discussing it, they could have all addressed it head-on with the intent of more effectively managing it for the greater good. This lesson might come in handy amidst Trump’s stated goal of reaching another deal with Iran.
Russia could share with Iran what it’s learned from engaging with Trump 2.0, and their candid exchange of views could better inform Iran of the US’ new worldview, how it envisages accomplishing this, and the way in which it negotiates so that any potential talks between them can be as fruitful as possible. Their updated Russian-Iranian Strategic Partnership pact from mid-January shows that there’s no bad blood between them over Syria, whether Assad’s fall or their competition there, and that each trusts the other.
It’s therefore entirely feasible that their privileged relations with one another can see Russia help the US reach a deal with Iran in the event that Russia and the US first agree on a peaceful settlement to the Ukrainian issue per their mutual desire for a “New Détente” that could revolutionize the world order. If successful, then the next in line for the US to make a deal with could be China, which Russia could also help it with as well in pursuit of their increasingly shared vision for the future of International Relations.
3. Israel has continued to promote bellicose rhetoric toward Iran, with some officials openly calling on President Trump to pursue strikes against the nation’s nuclear program or even carry out a strategy toward regime change, similar to “color revolutions” seen elsewhere in the world. Do you feel Russia may be willing to expand its security relationship with Iran to include improving defense cooperation, selling more advanced weaponry such as aircraft and air defense equipment and/or reaching mutual defense guarantees as established with the DPRK?
Russia is likely exploring the expansion of its military-technical ties with Iran after they updated their strategic partnership last month, but this would be predicated from Russia’s perspective on maintaining the regional balance of power with the aim of deterring an Israeli and/or US attack. For his part, Trump doesn’t seem interested in embroiling the US in another war, whether a conventional or proxy one. His goal is to wrap everything up in Eastern Europe and then West Asia in order to “Pivot (back) to Asia”.
What’s meant by this is that he wants to restore the US’ military-diplomatic focus on Asia that followed the withdrawal from Iraq, which can lead to muscularly containing China and thus raise the odds that it’ll agree to an economic-centric comprehensive deal that would be more in the US’ favor. Reaching agreements with China’s Russian and then Iranian strategic partners first, both of whom have enormous resource reserves, is meant to bolster the chances that Beijing will follow suit instead of holding out.
That’s because there’s the possibility that these deals could result in limiting those countries’ resource exports to China, not formally of course, but in the event that the US and its partners (including the Indo-Pacific Rim countries of India, South Korea, and Japan) offer better prices and partnership terms. It’s here where the US’ sanctions can be creatively leveraged by granting waivers to American and friendly countries’ companies to help bring about the desired change in those countries’ resource export trends.
The Chinese economy is still very much dependent on exports despite its current dual-circulation strategy as well as on resource imports, which makes it extremely vulnerable to its largest importers’ and suppliers’ trends. Trump 2.0 therefore appears to be trying to macro-economically engineer these selfsame trends that would be required for weakening the Chinese economy to the point where Beijing considers cutting an economic-centric deal with Washington on more of the latter’s terms than before.
Russia seems to understand what the US wants to do and how it plans to bring this about, whether due to its own analysis of Trump 2.0 or because its representatives explicitly conveyed this to them, which explains Putin’s seemingly abrupt interest in cutting a deal and even partnering with the US. If both are successful, then the US’ threat perception of Russia will disappear while its overall focus then turns towards Iran and China, thus relieving some of the past three years’ worth of intense pressure on Russia.
Once again standing in the US’ way by offering mutual defense guarantees to Iran, which were noticeably missing from their newly updated strategic partnership pact last month, would therefore defeat the whole purpose of cutting a deal with the US and even economically partnering with it afterwards. In fact, the preceding rationale very strongly suggests that Russia would try to take the diplomatic lead in encouraging Iran to cut its own such deal with the US in order to take the pressure off of both of them.
The more protracted that Sino-US talks are, which could even even descend into a global rivalry along the lines of the Soviet-US one after World War II, the better it would be for Russia and Iran if they already reached their own deals with the US since they could then balance between both camps. The same goes for India, which still counts China as its top trade partner in spite of their border dispute but is overall much closer with the US, and these three could cooperate to maximize their collective influence.
A new Non-Alignment Movement, which could tentatively be coined the Neo-NAM, might then arise to help maintain the global balance of power and economic influence between those two superpowers. All the while, Russia, Iran, and India, as Chinese partners who by then would have also cut their own deals with the US (India’s being focused on trade unlike the other two’s mostly geopolitical and resource deals), would be in a prime global position. This could in turn herald the Golden Age that Trump wants.
Excerpts from this interview were included in Tom O’Connor’s article for Newsweek about “What A Trump-Putin Detente Means for Russia and Iran’s Partnership”.
