Iran is in a position to help Russia replenish its supplies, and it can use its experience and ingenuity to circumvent sanctions
Recently, the scale of Iranian military assistance to Russian military operations in Ukraine has become significant and is only growing. Iran is in a position to help Russia replenish its supplies, and it can use its experience and ingenuity to circumvent sanctions, which it has used almost since the creation of the Islamic Republic, to help Russia acquire what Iran cannot produce.
Thus, given that Iran supplies Russia directly from its own military industry and military sector, and that Iran can help Russia acquire covertly by circumventing sanctions, this assistance becomes very significant. But I would also like to point out something, in my opinion, very important in this context. This is the reason why Iran and Russia are cooperating.
Both of these states are authoritarian dictatorships. Both are revisionist powers that reject and challenge the international order and its rules. They are united by a hostile attitude towards the West, primarily towards the United States and the values that the United States upholds. They are in the past of the empire with a historical resentment for the loss of influence and a desire to restore it. And their cooperation can only grow, as there is not just an expedient confluence of circumstances to secure this assistance from Iran, but also a broader strategic horizon that they share. Their ultimate goals are very similar, and therefore their friendship will only grow.
Their ultimate goals are very similar, and therefore their friendship will only grow.
In this case, the Iranians seem to act without much cost and without much risk. I agree with the view that the world does not yet impose any punishment on Tehran for the position it has taken in this war. Their approach is relatively cost-free. But I would like to put it in the right context.
The Iranians have been under a tough sanctions regime for decades, and now the Russians are under an equally tough and increasing sanctions regime. What Iranians and Russians have in common when it comes to sanctions is this. They are not Western democracies. They are not responsible to their people to provide them with what they need.
They don’t need to supply people with clean water. They don’t need to provide food for them. They do not need to provide a pension fund. They don’t have to provide anything that makes up our budgetary priorities and our worldview. And so they understood one thing a long time ago, and they want all the other Russians to understand it. Despite the fact that the imposition of sanctions damages their economy, they are still able to maintain their power in the country. They are immune to the challenge from within, with the help of their repressive apparatus. And they can redirect resources that we consider to be a priority for the socio-economic, cultural, educational needs of the country, necessary for its development and prosperity, to what is necessary to maintain the foundations of their regime and its survival.
And so in the current situation, these regimes succeed. Our sanctions do not hit the Iranian economy so hard as to make it fragile so that it can collapse from internal pressure or from massive defections from the ranks of the regime. There is, however, a difference regarding Russian sanctions, which I want to emphasize and highlight one important success of anti-Russian sanctions. These sanctions can be expanded, they can be improved. And, of course, the Russians will find and are already finding ways to get around them.
But the biggest positive about Western anti-Russian sanctions is that they have effectively eliminated Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, which was one of the Western alliance’s biggest vulnerabilities at the start of the crisis. Countries such as Germany and Italy were seriously dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies. Today, these countries have more or less moved away from this dependence, or are moving away from it, or are beginning to look for alternative sources. They are looking for LNG. They are developing various supplier relationships to essentially cut themselves off from Russia. And this means that in the long run such a Russia can never be integrated into the European economy and the world economy, and that Europe has forced Russia to lose leverage over its leaders. This is a huge achievement.
If we talk about the protest movements in Iran, then, apparently, they, unfortunately, have not reduced the ability of the Iranian regime to sow chaos and unrest in part of our planet at the moment. I want to say something about betting that internal opposition will change the course of history. If you were to ask any of us in this conversation, and the vast majority of Middle East experts, to name the most stable Arab country in November 2010, I think many would point to Tunisia as the best example of such stability. And so it was. But in a matter of weeks, this island of authoritarian stability and prosperity, of course, went up in flames.
And what does this tell us about the predictability of the coming changes? This can tell us two things. First, that regimes that oppress their own people have a certain lifespan. And secondly, it is impossible to predict that the unrest within the country will lead to the overthrow or not the overthrow of the existing regime.
We see a recurring wave of protests in Iran that differ in who makes up their core – it can be students or workers, women, minorities, depending on what caused this wave. But it can be seen that the interval between these waves seems to be getting shorter and shorter. So you can say that it looks like at some point they are going to shake this regime and overthrow it. And I wish them success in this. And I hope the same will happen in Russia. But such a great power as the United States and the Western world as a whole cannot build its strategy only on the hope, or even on the certainty that, at some point in history, authoritarian regimes will collapse under the pressure of their internal contradictions.
We must develop various tools ourselves, and I think that our sanctions regime can become one of these tools. First of all, I think it’s a powerful tool, but you need to know how to use it. And part of the problem with our sanctions over the past few years is that we announce them and then move on to preparing the next package of sanctions. And the next day the Iranians or the Russians or the Venezuelans or the Chinese go to their company registry and turn, say, company X into company Y. They just change the sign, phone number or email and move on. And before we catch up with them, it will be four months.
And every time between bureaucratic nonsense and dysfunctions, change of administrations and personnel, we lose focus, we lose or change priorities. And in the end, these sanctions are easily bypassed by those to whom they were directed. So we need to think more carefully about how we are going to advance our interests.
Of course, it is necessary to support internal opposition, because it is right from a moral point of view, and it can really give us some positive result in the long run. But don’t bet that the Iranian people or the Russian people will overthrow their tyrants anytime soon.
N.V. Translation
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