Putin leaves Iran to its own devices

Iran is demanding more support from Russian leader Putin. Abbas Araghchi brought to the Russian capital a letter from Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who demands that Putin be more active in supporting Tehran.

However, the question remains: what can the Russian leader really do in a situation involving missile exchanges between Iran and Israel, and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites? Even if a ground operation took place in Iran, Russia would likely stay out of it.

Russia simply doesn’t have extra forces because of its ongoing war against Ukraine. This is shown by its weakening presence in Africa and Syria. It’s also clear that Russia cannot help Iran while it is being shelled by Israel or the United States.

In the end, it was Russia that depended on Iranian drones and missiles — not the other way around. Moscow simply lacks the military-industrial capacity to help Iran in its fight against its enemies. Still, Russian officials try to act as though they’re fulfilling the terms of their agreements with Iran.

Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, read aloud sections of the Russian-Iranian strategic partnership agreement on air. These sections state that if one of the countries is attacked, the other undertakes not to grant any victory to the aggressor country.

According to the Kremlin, that’s exactly what Russia is doing now. “So, a simple question arises,” Zakharova told reporters. “Who are these provocateurs calling on Russia to help Iran more?”

The answer seems clear: it’s the same people who listened to Putin and Zakharova speak about Russia’s grand geopolitical role — and believed them.

Perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei was among those who believed the rhetoric — and now he, too, is appealing to the Russian leader. Putin finds himself in a truly difficult position. He must maintain at least a semblance of normal relations with U.S. President Donald Trump.

This semblance of normalcy is crucial for Putin, as it enables his continued aggression against Ukraine and sustains his hopes for the eventual capitulation of a country he deeply resents. In this war, Putin has, in many ways, staked his entire political future. He needs to preserve the capacity for further offensives and the potential to seize additional Ukrainian territory.

At the same time, he must project the image of Russia as a major global player. Yet, amid the ongoing war with Ukraine and his reluctance to provoke the American president, achieving that goal has become nearly impossible. Putin’s effective abandonment of Iran is merely the latest in a series of geopolitical setbacks.

Consider, for instance, Russia’s inability to effectively support Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. When the Syrian opposition advanced toward Damascus, Moscow was more inclined to observe the developments than to provide meaningful assistance to the embattled Syrian president.

In fact, the mere granting of asylum to Assad and his family in the Russian Federation can now be viewed as one of Russia’s few political achievements in the region. This is despite the fact that, unlike Iran, Syria hosts Russian military bases critical to the logistics of Moscow’s operations across the African continent.

We are already witnessing how the erosion of these logistical assets is undermining Russia’s influence in African states, as well as the capabilities of the military regimes in Africa that have come to power with Russian backing.

A similar trend is evident in the post-Soviet space. Over the past four years, Russia’s influence in the former Soviet republics has steadily declined. The last notable Kremlin initiative was the deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan under the banner of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in the winter of 2022.

However, following the outbreak of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, Moscow was forced to withdraw its contingent from Kazakhstan, just as it later had to pull out its so-called peacekeepers from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Today, we see the leaders of former Soviet republics turning to others — Xi Jinping, Erdoğan — but not to Putin. He is increasingly viewed as someone who, first, does not respect their sovereignty, and second, lacks the ability to reshape the political landscape of the post-Soviet space in their favor through force.

So what can Putin do for Ayatollah Khamenei? If a situation arises in Iran in which the Ayatollah and his supporters are unable to retain power, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is forced to admit the defeat of the theocratic forces that have been abusing Iranians since the victory of the so-called Islamic Revolution in 1979. Putin will only have to state that another regime that was an important part of the so-called axis of evil has lost its ability to destabilize the civilized world.

Of course, the Russian leader will not like this, but fortunately, he cannot do anything real to support this criminal regime.

So the question is not even that Putin is coldly abandoning the Iranian ayatollahs to their fate amid Israeli and American bombing. The issue is that Putin cannot offer any real efforts to help these ayatollahs win the conflict and retain power in Iran. Russia's role as a global power in the modern world can be forgotten forever.

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About the author. Vitaly Portnikov, journalist, winner of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine

The editorial team does not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.