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Lawfare Daily: Inside Iran's Complicated Relationship with Russia

March 17, 2026·32 min·2 clips

After invading Ukraine, Russia stopped cooperating with the West on Iran's nuclear deal, letting the opportunity vanish by fall 2022.

Host Anastasia Lopatina interviews Hanna Nott about the Russia-Iran relationship in the context of the current U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran. Nott traces the relationship's roots to Soviet-era mistrust: Soviet occupation of parts of Iran during WWII, Soviet support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, and tensions with the post-1979 Islamic Republic. From the 1990s, cooperation grew but was always limited by thin economic ties, competing oil export interests, and Russian reluctance to provide Iran's most-wanted military systems like Su-35 fighters and S-400 air defenses. Russia's interests in the Middle East span security (preventing Islamic radicalism from spreading to its own Muslim populations), economics (arms sales, Rosatom nuclear plants, OPEC Plus coordination), and status (leveraging its Iran relationship for influence with Israel and Gulf states). The Syrian civil war was a watershed, creating the first military coordination between Russia and Iran in support of Assad and institutionalizing military-to-military ties. Russia played a constructive role in Iran nuclear negotiations through February 2022, but after the Ukraine invasion it cooled toward Western cooperation, became more defensive of Iran, and helped close the window for restoring the JCPOA. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership agreement, signed after lengthy negotiations, deliberately excludes a mutual defense clause, and notably both sides opposed including one: Russia to avoid military entanglement, Iran due to its longstanding principle of defense self-sufficiency rooted in the Iran-Iraq War. On the current war, Nott describes Russia's initial shock at American impunity, particularly the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei within 24 hours, giving way to recognition that Russia can benefit. Two concrete benefits have emerged: rising oil prices that led the U.S. to temporarily lift restrictions on Russian oil shipments, and potential diversion of Patriot interceptors from Ukraine to Gulf capitals. Russia is sharing intelligence and operational lessons from Ukraine with Iran, including drone strike tactics against air defenses, which Nott calls the least Russia can do given it originally received the Shahid drone technology from Iran. Putin maintains a careful bifurcation: the Kremlin speaks cautiously to preserve Trump relations, while the Russian MFA aggressively criticizes the U.S. at the UN. However, Russia faces a deeper concern that the Trump administration is unpredictable and interventionist, evidenced by actions against Maduro in Venezuela, the Iran war, and American economic initiatives in the South Caucasus.

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