{"id":697351,"date":"2026-01-15T09:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/697351\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T09:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:36:15","slug":"russia-unlikely-to-risk-reputation-failure-by-intervening-in-iran-unrest-vladimir-putin-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/697351\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia unlikely to risk \u2018reputation failure\u2019 by intervening in Iran unrest | Vladimir Putin News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kremlin is confident that mass protests in Iran<\/a> have peaked, and Tehran\u2019s leadership has managed to squash domestic resistance to its rule, according to one of Russia\u2019s pre-eminent experts on Iran.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s embassy in Tehran apparently informed Moscow that the protests have died down and that the Kremlin \u201ccan breathe a sigh of relief\u201d, Nikita Smagin told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The protests over economic hardships erupted on December 28, spreading to hundreds of cities and towns throughout the sanctions-hit nation of more than 90 million.<\/p>\n

Iranian law enforcement squashed them, possibly violently, and Moscow \u201cthinks that nothing threatens Iran from within\u201d, said Smagin, who fled Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned \u201cthe illegal Western pressure\u201d and lambasted the unnamed \u201cexternal forces\u201d that strive to \u201cdestabilise and destroy\u201d the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notorious methods of \u2018colour revolutions\u2019 are being used, when specifically trained and armed provocateurs turn peaceful protests into cruel and senseless lawlessness, pogroms, the killing of law enforcement officers and average citizens, including children,\u201d Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova claimed.<\/p>\n

She used a decades-old Kremlin mantra about \u201ccolour revolutions\u201d allegedly organised and paid for by the West in former Soviet nations of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the early 2000s to topple Moscow-friendly authoritarian governments.<\/p>\n

The threats from United States President Donald Trump to interfere in the Iranian protests are \u201ccategorically unacceptable\u201d, Zakharova said, adding that the \u201cdecline in the artificially-instigated protests\u201d may lead to stabilisation in Iran.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Trump urged Iranians to \u201ctake over institutions\u201d and claimed that US \u201chelp is on its way\u201d.<\/p>\n

On January 2, he wrote: \u201cWe are locked and loaded and ready to go,\u201d and in June, called Ayatollah Ali Khamenei an \u201ceasy target\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the protests \u2013 just as he ignored the January 3 abduction<\/a> of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Moscow\u2019s closest ally in Latin America.<\/p>\n

Despite the condemnation of Trump\u2019s threats, Moscow \u201ccan hardly do anything about it\u201d, Smagin said.<\/p>\n

Prior to its Foreign Ministry\u2019s rhetorical fireworks on Tuesday, for almost two weeks, Moscow was silent about the protests.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin was not sure that Khamenei\u2019s administration would survive and that any harsh statements \u201cwould hinder the mending of ties with new authorities\u201d that could have replaced it, Smagin claimed.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s position appears similar to its response to the toppling of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.<\/p>\n

In October 2025, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited Moscow and pledged to \u201chonour\u201d the deals al-Assad had made with Russia, including energy contracts and the presence of Russian air force and naval bases.<\/p>\n

To an observer in Ukraine, Moscow\u2019s fuming about \u201ccolour revolutions\u201d is a tired cliche.<\/p>\n

Russia interprets \u201cany protests against dictatorship and mass rallies for democratisation as a result of external meddling\u201d, Kyiv-based analyst Vyacheslav Likhachev told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Later, the pro-Kremlin figures used the term to describe popular uprisings elsewhere, including the Arab Spring protests of the early 2010s that toppled Moscow-friendly leaders in Egypt and Libya.<\/p>\n

Similarly, any protests in Russia were seen as instigated by \u201cforeign ill-wishers\u201d, Likhachev said.<\/p>\n

Iran has accused<\/a> foreign nations of being behind the unrest. A television channel in Israel that is aligned with the government claimed that \u201cforeign agents\u201d had armed Iranian protesters.<\/p>\n

Several analysts have told Al Jazeera<\/a> in recent days that while the protesters have legitimate concerns, they believe Israel is playing a role in inflaming the tensions.<\/p>\n

More than 100 security personnel have been killed in two weeks of unrest, Iran\u2019s state media has reported, while opposition activists say the death toll is higher and includes thousands of protesters. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the figures; the internet has been cut off in Iran for five days.<\/p>\n

Russia will not risk \u2018another reputation failure\u2019, says former diplomat<\/p>\n

Centuries-old Russia-Iran ties have not always been cordial.<\/p>\n

Russian tsars bit off huge chunks of Iranian territory that now constitute Russia\u2019s Northern Caucasus and the ex-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.<\/p>\n

Communist Moscow strove to turn northern Iran into a \u201cSoviet republic\u201d in the early 1920s, briefly advocated for the independence of Iranian Kurds, and sought to control Tehran\u2019s oil reserves after World War II.<\/p>\n

But post-Soviet Moscow became Tehran\u2019s main international backer, shielding it from United Nations\u2019 resolutions and Western sanctions, building its Bushehr nuclear power station and supplying it with sophisticated weaponry.<\/p>\n

The latter included the \u201cadvanced\u201d S-400 air defence systems that failed, however, to repel Israeli and US drone and missile strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure last June.<\/p>\n

In return, Tehran aided Moscow\u2019s war effort in Ukraine by supplying drones, artillery shells, mortar mines, small gliding bombs and, reportedly, ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n

But the 20-year \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d agreement that Russia and Iran inked a year ago did not foresee military assistance. Moscow\u2019s words on Trump\u2019s threats did not even amount to \u201csabre-rattling\u201d, a former Russian diplomat said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy rattle sabres if it will only result in yet another reputation failure?\u201d Boris Bondarev, who quit his Foreign Ministry job to protest the invasion of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin is too afraid the White House could lose interest in its numerous concessions on the Ukraine war \u2013 while Trump does not need Moscow to agree to his possible actions in Iran, Bondarev said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does Russia have to respond with? Withdraw troops from Ukraine and send them [to Iran]? Threaten Trump so that he completely loses interest towards Russia and the \u2018deal\u2019?\u201d he asked rhetorically.<\/p>\n

Western sanctions keep hobbling Russia\u2019s economy, while average Russians are exhausted by the deaths on the Ukrainian front line, air raid sirens, airport shutdowns, galloping prices, pervasive propaganda and repression.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran? What Iran? We\u2019re busy surviving. My son is grieving the blocking of [popular online game] Roblox, my husband barely earns enough for our mortgage payments. Don\u2019t pester me with questions about Iran,\u201d Irina, a mother of two from the Urals Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

She withheld her last name for security concerns.<\/p>\n

But a renowned pro-Kremlin analyst, Sergey Markov, optimistically predicted Moscow\u2019s help to \u201creform\u201d Iran after the protests are over.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe protests will be suppressed, but problems will remain. That\u2019s why Iran awaits reforms. It would be right if Russia could help Iran with advice on reforms \u2013 advice both political and in political technologies,\u201d Markov wrote on Telegram on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kremlin is confident that mass protests in Iran have peaked, and Tehran\u2019s leadership has managed to squash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[32,299,774,839,12,332,7661,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-697351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-middle-east","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","15":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115898442702887144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}