The Russia-Iran Coalition Deepens

The Russia-Iran Coalition Deepens

By Karolina Hird and Kitaneh Fitzpatrick

January 28, 2025

Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally shifted and intensified the Russo-Iranian relationship. Tehran has leveraged Moscow’s growing material and financial requirements to sustain its war effort and support Tehran’s own domestic and foreign policy objectives. The core of the Russo-Iranian relationship is a mutually binding interest in challenging and eventually overturning the US-led world order. This shared ideological core allowed the Russo-Iranian relationship to weather and survive tensions and challenges that have arisen since 2022, and the United States should not expect this ideological core to weaken in the years ahead. Russo-Iranian cooperation is occurring along seven major axes that relate to and overlap in the defense, economic, and political spheres. It is also not a perfectly one-to-one relationship—Moscow and Tehran are seeking different outcomes from their collaboration. The interrelated nature of these nodes of cooperation should emphasize to the United States and its allies that the success of Russia cannot be separated from the success of Iran.

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