“They don’t like each other:” Is Russia and Iran’s alliance falling apart?

Iranian-build drones that Russia has used to hit Kyiv [Iranian Army via AP]

Drones over Ukraine

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Iran reiterated its “neutrality,” abstaining or voting against UN resolutions condemning the war.

But Iran's supreme leader sounded far from neutral.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that Washington’s “mafia regime” needed “crisis spots all over the world” and made Ukraine its “victim”.

“Support by Western governments for administrations and politicians that have been installed by them is a mirage,” he said in an hour-long speech on March 1, 2022, referring to Ukraine’s pro-Western government.

Four months later, Putin visited Tehran, where he heard another anti-Western barb.

“In case of Ukraine, had you not shown your initiative, the other side would have started the war,” Khamenei told Putin, echoing Moscow's narrative about NATO and the collective West that “instigated” the war.

“If [NATO] had not been stopped in Ukraine, it would have started a war [with Russia], using [annexed] Crimea as a pretext,” he said.

Putin seemed pleased with the remarks and replied that “the way the West behaves left Russia no other choice”.

But the Russian leader was even more pleased by Iran moving from neutrality to providing direct military support, supplying Shahed (“Martyr”) drones.

Known as Geran-2, the Russian Shaheds were heavily modified, and the most recent ones have jet engines or can launch small missiles at fighter jets, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence.

Iran has also provided Russia with ammunition, helmets and flak jackets.

After the US-Israeli attacks on Iran started in February, Moscow returned the favour, sending some modified Shaheds back to Iran with the Kometa-B satellite navigation module, which helps avoid jamming.

One of them, launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, hit a British airbase on Cyprus on March 1, reported The Times newspaper in the UK.

Moscow has provided Tehran with data from Liana, Russia’s only fully functional system of spy satellites, on the location of U.S.-military infrastructure in the Middle East, according to military expert Pavel Luzin.

Russia condemned the Israeli and US attacks that killed Khamenei on February 28, but one thing Putin never considered was sending troops to help Iran.

“This situation is a blow to Putin’s image that yet again shows that he is incapable of really helping his partners, his allies,” Ruslan Suleymanov, an associate fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Center, a US-British think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Some analysts had even suggested that the Moscow-Tehran alliance would not survive the Iran conflict because the Kremlin was eager to trade ties with Iran for Washington’s concessions on Ukraine.

Moscow “surely can propose” to swap Iran for Ukraine, former diplomat Bondarev said.

But “what they can offer [on Iran] is obviously less than what they want to get in Ukraine”, he said, referring to Russia’s demands to cede the remaining part of the Donbas region as a precondition for peace talks.

“Moscow would gladly give up Iran for concessions, serious concessions on Ukraine,” Smagin said.

“The swapping of Iran for Ukraine would undoubtedly be in the Kremlin’s interests, and it would have done it,” he said.

But the time for that has passed, Smagin added. No such deal is likely now, he says, because of the European Union’s role in the Ukraine peace talks.

Seeing the Russian-Ukrainian war as an existential threat to the EU, Brussels opposes Washington’s “peace at any price” proposals regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war and Moscow’s demands to limit Ukraine’s armed forces.

Russia may promise Washington and Tel Aviv to stop providing satellite and intelligence data to Iran if Washington stops providing similar data to the Ukrainian army, Smagin said.

But Suleymanov believes some “haggling” between Moscow and Washington is only possible if Moscow is chosen as a mediator in talks.

While Russia has helped pass along messages from the various sides, Pakistan has been chosen to mediate the U.S.-Israel-Iran talks.

That choice emphasises the insignificance of Moscow and its alliance with Iran in global affairs, according to Mustafayev.

And there’s another reason Moscow hasn’t been chosen as mediator: few have forgotten Russia’s breach of trust.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Kyiv had the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Moscow and Washington guaranteed Kyiv’s security in return for Ukraine’s abandonment of Ukrainian nuclear weapons.

Thirty years later, Moscow annexed Crimea and backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine.

“Mediation requires trust from all participants, and that’s the resource Russia doesn’t have today,” Mustafayev said.