What A Trump-Putin Detente Means for Russia and Iran’s Partnership

NEWSWEEK -Feb27th2025

President Donald Trump‘s pivot toward improving ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised new questions about the future of Russia’s complex yet strategically important relationship with Iran, with whom Moscow just recently signed a historic treaty.

While renewed U.S.-Russia contacts have focused first and foremost on finding a settlement to the war in Ukraine, the White House has also tapped the Kremlin for its influential role in the Middle East, where Iran and Israel, a close U.S. ally, have engaged in direct hostilities over the war in Gaza. Russia was among the key parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement that Trump abandoned during his first term in office and Moscow has expressed willingness to explore a revival of diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.

Trump has also proposed negotiations for a new deal that would allow Iran to “peacefully grow and prosper” and he has downplayed the likelihood of military action against its nuclear program. But the U.S. leader’s history of hostility toward the Islamic Republic and the return of his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions stoke uncertainty for Russia.

“Russia is ready to assist in solving the problem of Iran’s nuclear dossier, its relations with the United States and some of its neighbors in the region,” Andrey Baklanov, a Middle East specialist who previously served as Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia and is today a professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told Newsweek.

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