Iran–Russia relations

• 1. Introduction

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  Iran and Russia share one of the world's most complicated diplomatic histories, stretching back more than a millennium. As early as the 8th century AD, Persian merchants and Rus' traders were exchanging goods along the Caspian Sea routes. By the 9th and 10th centuries, those exchanges had turned violent. In 913, a Rus' fleet of 500 ships arrived on the shores of what is now Iran, pillaging the Gorgan region along with Gilan and Mazandaran, seizing slaves and goods before retreating north.

  Formal diplomacy would not emerge for another six centuries. When it did, in 1521, Shah Ismail I sent an emissary to the Grand Prince Vasili III of Muscovy with a specific goal in mind: forging a common front against the Ottoman Empire. That shared enemy would define the relationship for generations. But the friendship was never simple. The two powers lurched between alliance and aggression, between mutual benefit and outright conquest. Russia would eventually seize vast Iranian territories and divide Iran with Britain. It would arm Iran's enemies, prop up puppet regimes on Iranian soil, and then, after the Soviet collapse, rebuild ties into what American officials would one day call a full-fledged defense partnership.

  How did two civilizations move from medieval raids on the Caspian to a joint drone-production program in the 21st century? And what does their partnership today reveal about the limits of loyalty between nations that have spent most of their history as rivals?

• 2. A Shared Enemy, A Fragile Friendship

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  Shah Ismail I's message to Vasili III carried an unmistakable subtext: the Ottomans were a threat to both Persia and Muscovy, and cooperation was the logical answer. The two states began exchanging ambassadors in 1552-53, and by 1586 they had established a regular diplomatic relationship. Iran on multiple occasions offered territorial concessions, including Derbent and Baku, in exchange for Muscovite support against their Ottoman rivals.

  The Muscovy Company, founded in 1553, expanded trade routes across the Caspian Sea. Moscow's role as middleman between England and Persia allowed goods to bypass zones controlled by the Ottomans and the Portuguese. Muscovite traders set up business in urban centres as far south as Kashan. Tsar Ivan IV's victories over the Kazan Khanate in 1552 and the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556 reopened the Volga-Caspian route and brought Russian influence into the Caucasus for the first time.

  Yet even during this period of guarded friendship, tensions occasionally broke through. In the 1660s, the Cossack ataman Stenka Razin raided Persia's north coast and occasionally wintered there, creating diplomatic headaches for the Tsar. A Russian folk song about Razin's relationship with a Persian princess, described as the tragic and semi-legendary tale of that era, is still sung today. The Russo-Persian War of 1651-53 ended with the Tsardom ceding its footholds in the North Caucasus back to the Safavids, a reminder that proximity guaranteed neither loyalty nor peace.

  The balance of power held roughly even through the Safavid period. Peter the Great's proclamation of the Russian Empire in 1721 began to shift that balance permanently, setting the stage for a century and a half of imperial pressure on Persian sovereignty.

• 3. Peter's Gambit and Nader's Pushback

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  Peter the Great used Astrakhan as his base when he launched his campaign against a weakening Persia. The Safavid dynasty's fall in 1722, following the defeat of Shah Sultan Husayn, opened a window that Peter moved to exploit. The Russo-Persian War of 1722-23 allowed him to seize large swaths of territory in the Caucasus and northern mainland Iran.

  The Safavid collapse did not leave a vacuum for long. Nader Shah emerged as one of the most formidable military commanders in Persian history, and his rise changed the Russian calculus entirely. Fearing a costly conflict against Nader's forces, and pressed by Ottoman threats from the west, Russia negotiated its way out rather than fight its way through. The Treaty of Resht in 1732 and the Treaty of Ganja in 1735, signed during the reign of Anna of Russia, required a complete Russian withdrawal from the Caucasus and northern Iran.

  The Ganja agreement also included something unusual for the history of these two powers: a formal cooperative clause aimed at the Ottomans, the first instance of close Russo-Iranian collaboration against a shared enemy. It was short-lived. Nader Shah soon accused Russia of conspiring against him, and his 1741 invasion of Dagestan was partly directed at Russian interests. The Terek River was placed on high military alert until Nader's death.

  After Nader, the Zand dynasty's Karim Khan continued the pattern of seeking Russian support in exchange for territorial concessions on Iran's northern frontier, particularly against the Ottomans. The cycle of negotiation, alliance, and suspicion that had defined the relationship since 1521 was, by the late 18th century, about to tilt decisively against Iran.

• 4. Imperial Conquest and Cultural Contempt

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  The Qajar dynasty inherited a weakened state and faced a Russian Empire that no longer needed to negotiate as an equal. The first Qajar Persian ambassador to Russia was Mirza Abolhassan Khan Ilchi, a figure who would witness firsthand how the relationship had transformed. Under Fath Ali Shah, Iran was forced to sign the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, surrendering what is now Dagestan, Georgia, and large portions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1828 stripped Iran of modern-day Armenia and the rest of the Azerbaijan Republic, while granting Russia sweeping capitulatory rights.

  The territories lost under these two treaties had been considered integral parts of Iran for centuries. The area north of the Aras River, covering the contemporary nations of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the North Caucasian Republic of Dagestan, had been Iranian until Russian occupation in the 19th century. Russia actively worked to sever these territories from Iranian cultural influence, promoting a new secular Turkic identity in the region. Many Iranian-speaking residents of what would become the Azerbaijan Republic either hid their Iranian heritage or underwent progressive assimilation. The Tats and Kurds were absorbed particularly quickly.

  Anti-Russian sentiment erupted in uprisings across Persian cities. Alexander Griboyedov, the Russian intellectual, diplomat, and best friend of Alexander Pushkin who served as ambassador to Persia, was killed in Tehran during one of these uprisings, along with hundreds of Cossacks.

  By 1907, Russia and Britain partitioned Iran into spheres of influence through the Anglo-Russian Convention. Russia took the north, including Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan. Russian consulates in Iran's Gilan, Azerbaijan, and Khorasan provinces wielded such authority that they collected local taxes and dominated local Iranian administration. The historian Elena Andreeva noted that Russian contempt for Iranians was documented in over 200 Russian travelogues published during the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as in official diplomatic documents. At the start of World War I, some 4,000 Russian settlers lived in Astarabad and Mazandaran, and Russians had founded at least 15 villages in northeastern Iran.

• 5. Revolution, Retreat, and the Soviet Shadow

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  The collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917 initially appeared to offer Iran relief. The Bolshevik Revolution led to thousands of Russians fleeing southward into Persia, many settling in northern communities whose descendants remain in the country today. Notable descendants include the political writer Marina Nemat and Nader Jahanbani, a former general and deputy chief of the Imperial Iranian Air Force, whose mother was a White Russian emigre.

  The Bolsheviks formally reversed the 1907 partition through the Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship in 1921, returning territory to Iran and restoring Iranian navigation rights on the Caspian Sea. Yet Soviet involvement did not end there. The short-lived Persian Socialist Soviet Republic was established in 1920 with support from Azeri and Caucasian Bolshevik leaders. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet secret service carried out operations inside Iran targeting White Russian emigres.

  Trade between the two countries recovered in the 1920s, with Baku serving as a major venue for commerce between the USSR and the Middle East. But the underlying dynamic remained one of Soviet pressure on Iranian autonomy. In 1941, during World War II, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom jointly invaded Iran, disregarding its declared neutrality. After the war, a Soviet cable dated the 6th of July, 1945, ordered local commanders to "begin preparatory work to form a national autonomous Azerbaijan district with broad powers within the Iranian state" while simultaneously developing separatist movements in Gilan, Mazandaran, Gorgan, and Khorasan. Two Soviet-backed puppet states, the Azerbaijan People's Government and the Republic of Mahabad, were established in Iran before both collapsed in the Iran crisis of 1946.

  That postwar confrontation drew the United States fully into Iranian politics and set the stage for a Cold War in which Iran would eventually find itself squeezed between both superpowers. When Ayatollah Khomeini took power after the 1979 revolution, he called the Soviet Union the "Lesser Satan," a rebuke of its atheistic communist ideology, while rejecting alignment with either side.

• 6. Arms, Reactors, and Strategic Realignment

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  The Soviet Union became the first state to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran in February 1979. Its support was not unconditional. During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, the Soviets supplied Saddam Hussein with large quantities of conventional weapons. The USSR voted at the UN Security Council for a ceasefire resolution and warned Iran against attacking Iraq in July 1982. Iran, in turn, backed elements of the Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

  After the war, in 1989, Iran made an arms deal with the Soviet Union, acquiring advanced aircraft including MiG-29s and Su-24s. Iran's air force had been severely depleted by eight years of war and could no longer obtain spare parts or new aircraft from the United States. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of the Russian Federation.

  Under Yeltsin, Russia viewed Iran as a key arms market and a means of asserting independence from Washington. By the mid-1990s, Russia agreed to resume work on Iran's long-delayed nuclear reactor at Bushehr, a deal that drew heavy U.S. criticism over proliferation concerns. Yeltsin eventually cancelled a proposed centrifuge technology transfer but maintained the Bushehr commitment. Between 2000 and 2007, Russia accounted for approximately 85% of Iran's total military imports. Iran ranked as Russia's third-largest weapons recipient during that period, with deliveries valued at $1.96 billion, equal to 5.4% of Russia's total military exports.

  In May 2007, Iran received an invitation from CSTO secretary-general Nikolai Bordyuzha to join the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Russia-aligned bloc that parallels NATO. Iran never formally joined; Western observers pointed to ayatollah opposition to joining a bloc dominated by a historically rival power. Vladimir Putin, elected president in March 2000, deepened military and economic ties with Tehran. In March 2001, he hosted Iranian president Khatami in Moscow, where both signed the Treaty on the Basic Elements of Relations and the Principles of Cooperation. This summit coincided with Russia's withdrawal from the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission and paved the way for arms deals reportedly worth $7 billion.

• 7. Drones, Sanctions, and the Ukraine Factor

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  Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine reshaped the Iran-Russia partnership in concrete and visible ways. A Russian delegation visited Kashan Airfield south of Tehran during June and July 2022 to observe Iranian-manufactured drones. Ukrainian forces encountered Iranian-supplied suicide drones in September 2022, publishing images of the wreckage. On the 6th of October, 2022, Iran agreed to provide additional surface-to-air missiles and drones to Russia.

  In 2023, Iran began supplying Russia with Shahed-136 loitering munitions under a reported agreement worth $1.75 billion. That arrangement included not just drone deliveries but technical assistance for domestic production inside Russia. By 2025, a large manufacturing facility in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan had localized the majority of production, reducing reliance on Iranian components and lowering per-unit costs.

  Sanctions on both countries deepened their financial integration. In early February 2023, Tehran and Moscow linked the Russian bank messaging system SPFS with Iran's SEPAM service, allowing 700 Russian banks to exchange financial messages with Iranian banks. Both countries had been excluded from SWIFT. Trade between the nations rose 81% to a record $3.3 billion in 2021, and by 2022-23, Russia was by far the largest investor in Iran's sanctioned economy at $2.7 billion.

  In September 2025, Iran signed a $25 billion agreement for Russia to build four small nuclear power plants in Sirik, with the Generation III reactors expected to produce 5 GW of electricity. Iran's existing Russian-built Bushehr plant has a capacity of 1 GW. That same month came a complication: a member of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council, Mohammad Sadr, accused Russia on the 24th of August, 2025, of disclosing the locations of Iranian air defence systems during the conflict with Israel and Israel, calling the strategic alliance with Moscow "worthless."

• 8. Partnership Under Pressure

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  On the 17th of January, 2025, Vladimir Putin and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Iranian-Russian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in Moscow. The treaty was ratified between April and June 2025. It explicitly does not constitute a military alliance and does not commit Russia to defend Iran.

  The distinction mattered when war came. Following the outbreak of the Iran-Israel war on the 13th of June, 2025, Russian officials described the escalation as "alarming" and "dangerous." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Putin in Moscow on the 23rd of June, 2025. Putin condemned the U.S. bombing of Iran as "absolutely unprovoked aggression" and said Russia intended to support the Iranian people. Araghchi thanked Moscow for standing on the "right side of history and international law." But Putin refrained from pledging specific assistance, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said further action would depend on Iran's needs. Kremlin support remained confined to diplomacy.

  In August 2025, it was confirmed that Russia had provided Iran with advanced Krasukha electronic warfare systems, which employ a broadband multifunctional electronic attack system interfering with radar, satellite signals, and ISR sensors including those used by AWACS aircraft and E-8 surveillance platforms.

  The relationship's outer limit was tested again in February 2026, when Israel and the United States launched a joint attack on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Putin condemned the assassination as committed in "cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law." Russia was reported to have provided Iran with geospatial intelligence for targeting U.S. warships and military command infrastructure in the region. Whether that intelligence support marks a crossing of the line from diplomatic ally to active partner in hostilities remains, as of now, the central unresolved question in one of the world's longest and most turbulent diplomatic relationships.