Ruchi Kumar is an Istanbul-based journalist who covers conflict, politics and gender.
Just days before Donald Trump returned to the White House, two of the country’s most powerful adversaries – Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart President Masoud Pezeshkian – signed a 20-year comprehensive strategic partnership treaty promising to enhance ties, including by pursuing cooperation in energy, trade and the military.
In itself, the deal offers both parties nearly nothing new, and changes little about their existing relationship. It includes a clause that states that neither country would allow the use of its territory by any country or group acting against the other country, and also forbids each country from supporting any party that might attack the other. But the document does not detail any specific military alliance, and no party has any obligation to implement the agreement.
The two countries remain engaged in separate conflicts against NATO allies – albeit to different degrees – and the deal appears to simply formalize the alliance that has grown between them since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in which Iran has provided Russia military support and Shahed drones. That support has been crucial for Russia, as it has found itself isolated on the world stage amid mounting sanctions, but such sanctions have also been a constraint on Tehran ever since the 1979 revolution gave rise to an extremist regime.
However, the timing of the deal makes it noteworthy. While it comes at the start of Donald Trump’s presidency, and thus appears intended to draw an us-versus-them line between the West and what former national security adviser H.R. McMaster has called the “axis of aggressors” (which includes North Korea), it also follows the collapse of the Russian-backed Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
Both Moscow and Tehran had been significantly involved in the conflict in that country. Syria was particularly crucial to Moscow, as Mr. al-Assad’s regime provided key naval air bases for the Russian military; those forces have had to withdraw. Iran, for its part, had invested heavily in Syria’s operational and military capacity, including by supporting its military proxies, which allowed Mr. al-Assad to continue waging his civil war.
But when push came to shove, neither Moscow nor Tehran came to the aid of Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government.
Russia and Iran have had a complicated relationship in the past. Over the last two decades, they’ve cooperated then fallen out repeatedly over several issues including arms trade, the North-South Transport Railway Corridor, and even over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
But Russia has not always been viewed as a reliable partner in Iran. In Syria, Moscow shared some strategic interests with Tehran and competed over others, and Iranian leaders were reportedly critical of what they saw as Russian inaction in response to the fall of Mr. al-Assad. In October, when Israel launched missile strikes against Iran, delays to Moscow’s promised delivery of Sukhoi-35 fighter jets drew Iranians’ ire – which is hardly the first time that issues over military purchases have become an irritant. And a proposed transport route in the Caucasus known as the Zangezur corridor – which Moscow seeks to govern as a way to solidify its influence in the Middle East, but which Tehran fears would cut off Iran’s border with Armenia – sparked serious tensions last fall.
Yet, despite the underlying mistrust, both countries are determined to put up the show of a joint front. In its introductory text, the treaty states that it aims to shape “a new just and sustainable multipolar world order.” But this deal looks like a culmination of Russia’s efforts to consolidate its alliances less on the basis of shared ideologies, and more for self-preservation. While still counting its losses from Syria and with an unpredictable president taking charge of the U.S. – the world’s biggest supporter of Ukraine – Russia is eager to diversify its strategic partnerships and reinforce existing ones.
In Iran, Russia not only finds military support, but also a trade partner that will purchase some of its Western-sanctioned gas – at least for now. Iran may have less to gain from this partnership beyond diplomatic solidarity in its conflict against Israel, but it is, after all, a relationship of convenience and good optics for the benefit of the West, in the wake of losses in Syria.
It has been said that war makes for strange bedfellows, and indeed, in the current state of global conflicts, Russia and Iran are finding comfort in the company of the enemies of their enemy in spite of their historical differences. However, without a collaborative project like the conflict in Syria, it remains to be seen whether having a common enemy, and no other substantial value or partnership, is sufficient in fostering stronger ties.