Thomas Frear — The Russian-Iranian Military Agreement: Another Perspective

The signing of the Russian-Iranian Military Cooperation Agreement on January 20 has led to speculation, fuelled by rhetoric from Moscow and Tehran, that the two states are working to secure Iran from any future military intervention to stop its nuclear program whilst securing an economically hard-pressed Russia a lucrative market for its arms exports.…

Resuscitating the possibility that Russia may supply Iran with advanced air defense systems, primarily the S-300 or S-400 SAM systems, would represent a major impediment to the lifting of further sanctions on Iran. Whilst a Russian sale of these weapons would breach the sanctions regime agreed in 2010 the fact that Russia is now itself being targeted with Western sanctions may have altered the cost-benefit calculation in favor of going ahead with the deal. 

Such a solution also represents a rare coalescence among some of the main internal drivers of Russian foreign policy, in this instance the energy lobby led by the state-owned giants Rosneft and Gazprom, and the arms manufacturing lobby, currently preeminent and flush with cash due to Russia’s ruinously expensive military modernization program.
This would form the latest in a recent trend of Russian “spoiler diplomacy,” whereby Russia acts through international institutions or negotiating formats to derail or block actions that are deemed detrimental to Russia’s national interest. This is the case in the UN Security Council over intervention in the Syrian civil war and in the east of Ukraine, where the strong Russian presence in the OSCE continually blocks the deployment of a meaningful international monitoring force.…

The Diplomat
The Russian-Iranian Military Agreement: Another Perspective
Thomas Frear | Researcher at the European Leadership Network