Vladimir Putin in Tehran to create new anti-West alliance

Moscow is looking to form new alliances to defeat western attempts to isolate Russia against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin will meet Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran. Picture: AFP.

President Putin arrives in Iran today (Tuesday) for talks aimed at boosting ties between Moscow and Tehran against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

On only his second trip outside Russia since ordering tanks across the border in February, Mr Putin will meet President Raisi and Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader. The two nations have had close relations for many years but Moscow had been reluctant to forge an outright alliance with Tehran because it worried about damaging its lucrative economic links to the West. Such concerns are now largely irrelevant for Russia, which has overtaken Iran as the world’s most-sanctioned country.

“This is an important visit for Putin personally,” said Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, which advises the foreign ministry. “The Kremlin doesn’t want to allow itself to be isolated.”

The US warned last week that Iran is preparing to provide Russia with hundreds of drones to strengthen its armed forces in Ukraine, but the Kremlin insists military procurement will not be discussed during the talks. Iran has not explicitly denied the US report.

The Javan newspaper, which is linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, touted the capabilities of the drones, saying they could be used by Russia to direct artillery fire and destroy Ukrainian military hardware. It suggested that Iran might want unspecified military assistance in return.

In Moscow, a military expert said that Russia’s armed forces would welcome the drones to replenish its resources amid the grinding conflict in Ukraine. “Even taking into account that we have our own production, we need more drones,” Ilya Kramnik told Vzglyad, a pro-Kremlin newspaper. “The more we have, the better.”

Mr Putin’s visit to Iran will provide him with a look at a country that many back home fear could be the blueprint for life in Russia under tough western sanctions. Almost 900 western companies have closed their operations in Russia since the start of the war and international flight bans have left it isolated.

Yevgeny Popov, a state television presenter, said the two nations would form an “axis of good”; a mocking reference to President George W Bush’s description in 2002 of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil”.

In the Middle East too, pro-Iranian voices have long promoted the idea that an “alliance of stability” – countries that focus on internal stability at the cost of human rights or personal freedoms – will become dominant as the West inevitably implodes. That alliance will take in Russia and Iran, and Iranian allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. It would be dominated by China, which many say they would prefer to domination by America.

Iran recently applied to join the Brics trading group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The move was presented in Moscow as evidence that western attempts to isolate Russia have failed, since the existing members account for more than 40 per cent of the world’s population and around 25 per cent of the global economy. “If all the isolated countries co-operate then they are no longer isolated,” Mr Kortunov said.

But this new grouping is not without its tensions. Religious hardliners in Iran are said to be opposed to becoming too close to Russia, a secular state where the Orthodox Church is increasingly powerful. On the other side, Iran’s main geopolitical ambition, the destruction of Israel, is not shared, at least overtly, by Russia and China.

More significantly, Iran is believed to be hurting economically after China and India snubbed its oil in favour of cut-price Russian exports. An unnamed Iranian trader told The New York Times that Iran’s exports to Asia have fallen to an estimated 700,000 barrels a day, half of the volumes on which it based its annual budget.

However, Iran might fill the gap left in the western market by the embargo on Russian oil if sanctions imposed by President Trump in 2018 are eased.

The talks in Tehran are part of regular meetings between Russia, Iran and Turkey – a Nato member – to discuss the war in Syria. Putin is due to hold separate talks with President Erdogan, who is thought to be seeking approval from the other two for a military offensive in northern Syria against Kurdish fighters that it regards as terrorists.

Russia and Iran support President Assad’s regime, while Turkey backs the rebel forces still trying to overthrow him. Iran has warned that any Turkish military campaign in Syria could destabilise the region.

Vladimir Sotnikov, a Russian analyst, told AFP: “The timing of this summit is not a coincidence. Turkey wants to conduct a ‘special operation’ in Syria just as Russia is implementing a ‘special operation’ in Ukraine.”

The Times