by Shireen T. Hunter
Not long after the outbreak of the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea, many observers began asking the following question: what impact could renewed Russo-Western tensions have on the fate of the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program? Will the Russians encourage Iran to become more obdurate [...]]]>
by Shireen T. Hunter
Not long after the outbreak of the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea, many observers began asking the following question: what impact could renewed Russo-Western tensions have on the fate of the ongoing negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program? Will the Russians encourage Iran to become more obdurate and change its current and more flexible approach to negotiations with the P5+1 countries (the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany), stop complying with sanctions on Iran, or even help it financially and militarily, for example by delivering the promised-but-withheld S-300 air defense system or even shipping the more advanced S-400?
Other questions are also important. Notably, what impact has the West’s treatment of Iran had on Russia’s ability to pressure Ukraine and in general to regain its influence in independent states of the former Soviet Union, including the Caucasus and Central Asia? Indeed, the Western policy of containing Iran and excluding it from many regional and transnational energy and other schemes has facilitated Russia’s policy of consolidating its position in the former USSR.
A major tool that Russia has used in its quest to regain influence over its former possessions has been its vast oil and gas reserves. This is quite evident in Ukraine’s case, where Russia has switched the gas spigot on and off as a way of pressuring Kiev. Iran is only second to Russia in its gas reserves and could have been an alternative to Russia in many countries of the former USSR, including Ukraine. Yet the Western policy of preventing any foreign investment in Iran’s energy sector, coupled with preventing any transfer of Iran’s oil and gas to Europe via various pipeline routes, has meant that Russia has gained an excessive share of the European energy market. Iranian gas could have easily been transported to Europe, especially the East European countries, through Turkey, Bulgaria and so on. Even Ukraine could have satisfied some of its energy needs through Iranian gas.
The same has been true in the Caucasus. Both Georgia and Armenia have wanted more energy cooperation with Iran. However, they were discouraged by the West and, in the case of Armenia, also pressured by Russia. The result has been their greater vulnerability to Russian pressure.
Meanwhile, preventing any of the Central Asian energy sources to pass through Iran, the only country with common land and sea borders with these countries (with the exception of Uzbekistan, which is a land-locked country), has made it more difficult for countries like Georgia to get, for instance, Turkmen gas. In other areas, too, excluding Iran from regional energy schemes, and discouraging Central Asian and Caucasian countries from cooperating with Iran, has worked either in Russia’s favor or created opportunities for China.
Even in the areas of security and conflict-resolution, Iran’s exclusion and the West’s encouraging regional countries to adopt anti-Iran policies has had negative effects. This has even given rise to new tensions and problems, for instance, between Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as exacerbated sectarian tensions. For example, Azerbaijan’s resulting animosity to Iran has led it periodically to favor Sunni radical Islamists. Consequently, today Azerbaijan has a serious Salafi problem, and sectarian tensions in the country have been on the rise.
The experience described above provides important lessons for Western policy towards Iran and regional issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and South Asia. The first lesson is that a policy of containment on several fronts is not practicable, at least not in the long run. For twenty years, the US has tried to contain both Russia and Iran in these regions and to bar Iran’s interaction with these regions, while also looking askance at China’s progress.
A second lesson is that excluding Iranian oil and gas from global markets inevitably limited Europe’s and Central Asia’s energy choices, making both more vulnerable to Russian pressures since, with the exception of Qatar, the Persian Gulf oil giants are not major players in the gas market.
The last and the most important lesson is that the West should press forward with negotiations with Iran, toward a satisfactory conclusion to the nuclear dispute. This should be followed by lifting sanctions, encouraging the return of Western energy companies to Iran, and planning new networks of energy transport which would include Iran. In the long run, this kind of engagement would also translate into better political relations between Iran and the West and produce a positive impact on Iran’s political evolution and hence issues of human rights and other freedoms in Iran.
With regard to broader regional security issues, the West should work with Iran on a case-by-case basis wherever this serves Western interests, rather than making all aspects of relations with Iran hostage to its stand on the Palestinian question. As shown by the example of Afghanistan — where Iran supported US interests in toppling the Taliban, only to be deemed part of an Axis of Evil — isolating and excluding Iran harms the West as much if not more than it does the Islamic Republic. Right now, the only real winner is Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
]]>Looking back over the past year, Moscow appears to have good reason to congratulate itself on the success of its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria in particular, and toward the Middle East in general. Indeed, while they did not necessarily do so at Moscow’s behest, several actors that play an [...]]]>
Looking back over the past year, Moscow appears to have good reason to congratulate itself on the success of its foreign policy toward Iran and Syria in particular, and toward the Middle East in general. Indeed, while they did not necessarily do so at Moscow’s behest, several actors that play an important role in the Middle East have come around to adopting policy approaches that Russian leaders have been urging on them.
The Russian position on the Iranian nuclear issue has long been that while Moscow does not want Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, it does not want America and its allies to pursue this goal either through the use force or further ratcheting up of economic sanctions against Iran. Moscow has long called for a negotiated settlement to this issue involving Tehran taking steps to reassure the international community that it is not seeking to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for a relaxation of the international sanctions regime.
In the past few months, this is exactly what has happened. Secret Iranian-American negotiations led to an interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue, and to subsequent negotiations for a permanent settlement. The prospects for armed conflict over the nuclear issue, which Moscow has sought to prevent, have definitely receded.
Since the inception of the Arab Spring conflict in Syria, Putin and his associates have claimed that the Assad regime, despite its problems, is better than the opposition forces seeking to replace it, which Moscow has characterized as consisting largely of radical Sunni Islamists whose victory would threaten Western interests as much as Russian ones. While not outwardly agreeing with Moscow on Assad, several other governments that have called for him to step aside have grown increasingly nervous about the nature of the Syrian opposition.
Further, three governments in particular have made policy changes that support the Russian goal of keeping Assad in power. In Egypt, the ouster of the elected Islamist President, Mohamed Morsi, by Egypt’s secular military also resulted in Cairo moving from being sympathetic to unsympathetic toward the Syrian opposition.
After the Assad regime used chemical weapons against its opponents in August 2013, the Obama administration first threatened the use of force against it but then accepted the Russian proposal for an internationally sanctioned effort to remove chemical weapons from Syria. Since this process depended heavily on the cooperation of the Assad regime, the Obama administration’s support for it resulted in tacit American acceptance of its continuation in power — something that the Syrian opposition and their supporters in the Gulf resented bitterly.
In addition, while the Turkish government has previously been strongly supportive of Syrian opposition efforts to oust Assad, recently Ankara launched military strikes against jihadist forces inside Syria — thus signaling it may be coming round to accepting the Russian view that the Assad regime is better than that which seeks to replace it.
Regarding both Iran and Syria, then, policy changes by others have recently become more supportive of Russian foreign policy preferences. There is no guarantee, however, that this will remain the case going forward.
The US Government has recently expressed concern that the Assad regime is dragging its feet on the chemical weapons agreement. If this continues, Russian interests could be hurt. If the US Government comes to believe that Moscow is supportive of the Assad regime’s lack of cooperation in this matter, a decidedly negative image of Russian intentions is likely to re-emerge in Washington. Under these circumstances, the Obama administration might well be unable to resist the likely rise of demands in Congress and by some US allies to seek retaliatory measures against Moscow for having duplicitously led Obama to believe that Assad would cooperate on the chemical accord. But even if Moscow were not blamed for the Syrian government’s recalcitrance, Washington would still come to see Putin as unable to deliver Assad on the chemical issue (as had been previously believed) — and thus there would be no point in further coordinating with Moscow on this issue.
While a deterioration of the situation regarding Syria could serve to marginalize Russia, an improvement of the situation regarding Iran could do so too. If indeed real progress is made in resolving the nuclear issue, then economic sanctions against Iran will be lifted either in whole or in part and Iranian cooperation with the West will increase. To the extent that Iranian relations with the West (especially the U.S.) improves, the less need Iran will have for relying on Russia — with which it has had a prickly relationship up to now despite their common animosity toward the U.S.
Furthermore, reduced economic sanctions on Iran could well result in Tehran producing and exporting far more oil than it does now, thus depressing oil prices and reducing the income of other oil exporters, including Russia. The desire to avoid this may have motivated Moscow to enter negotiations with Tehran over a bilateral exchange agreement worth $1.5 billion per month whereby Russia would reportedly buy up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day in exchange for Russian goods. But even if such a Russian-Iranian agreement comes into force, Tehran is hardly likely to forego the opportunity to increase oil exports to the rest of the world if the sanctions regime is relaxed.
So while Russian foreign policy toward Iran and Syria has benefited from recent events going Moscow’s way, its success is highly fragile as it could easily be damaged by the situation in Syria further deteriorating or by the situation regarding Iran improving.
]]>by Mark N. Katz
The prospects for improved ties between Washington and Tehran have dramatically increased since Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in August 2013. This has made several parties quite nervous, including American conservatives (who fear it is a trick) as well as Iranian conservatives, Arab Gulf [...]]]>
by Mark N. Katz
The prospects for improved ties between Washington and Tehran have dramatically increased since Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in August 2013. This has made several parties quite nervous, including American conservatives (who fear it is a trick) as well as Iranian conservatives, Arab Gulf states, and Israel (who all fear that it is not). There is one other party, though, that is quite nervous about what the prospects of improved Iranian-American relations will mean for it: Russia.
There have already been some signs that Moscow is worried about this. For example, back in February, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told journalists that while Moscow did not object to an Iranian-American bilateral dialogue, the Russian government “would like to know the essence of the agreements in order to be certain that no steps are taken in this sphere at Russia’s expense or [that] harm Russian interests.”
While Iran’s first revolutionary leader–Ayatollah Khomeini–was as hostile toward the Soviet Union as he was toward the United States, Moscow managed to improve relations after his death in 1989. Since then, Moscow has benefited from continued Iranian-American hostility in several ways.
First and foremost, American opposition to the export of oil and gas from Central Asia and the Caucasus through Iran to the world market has meant that much of the petroleum exports from these former Soviet republics has had to go through Russia (thus providing Moscow both with transit revenue and political leverage over them). Further, the success of American efforts to decrease Iranian petroleum exports has served to strengthen demand for petroleum from Russia (as well as other petroleum exporters).
In addition, American economic sanctions against Iran as well as Washington’s successful efforts to pressure many Western and other countries not to do business with Tehran has presented opportunities for Russian businesses to gain stakes in Iran that they might not have had otherwise (though, admittedly, the Russians have not done nearly as well in this regard as the Chinese). Finally, Iranian-American hostility has served to simultaneously increase Russia’s importance both to Tehran (as a means of restraining the U.S. vis-à-vis Iran in the UN Security Council and other fora), and to Washington (which has long sought to elicit greater Russian support on the Iranian nuclear issue).
Should an Iranian-American rapprochement actually fully develop, Moscow will lose all these advantages. Improved Iranian-American relations could lead to Caspian Basin oil and gas flowing south via Iranian pipelines to the world market, thus reducing the excess transit revenue and political leverage that Moscow now has over the Caucasus and Central Asia. An end to American economic sanctions will also lead not only to increased Iranian oil exports, but also the opening of the door to Western investment in Iran’s huge but underdeveloped natural gas sector–thus increasing the competition Russian oil and gas faces on the world market. Indeed, Iran’s overall trade with the West will blossom, thereby decreasing Russia’s share in the Iranian market. Improved Iranian-American relations will also mean that neither Washington nor Tehran will need any help from Moscow in dealing with each other.
Finally, Moscow may worry that if improved Iranian-American relations leads to Tehran reducing its support for the Assad regime in Syria, Russia will either be forced to accept whatever agreement the US and Iran reach, or be left to support Damascus all on its own.
Moscow, then, obviously hopes that the budding Iranian-American courtship will fail; it will certainly not do anything to facilitate it. If Washington and Tehran are both serious about pursuing rapprochement, however, there is little that Moscow can do to prevent this from occurring, or to avoid losing the advantages Russia has enjoyed from Iranian-American hostility up to now.
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