In Iran, Russia’s war on Ukraine is a political flash point

In Iran, Russia’s war on Ukraine is a political flash point

By Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell | AP

Yesterday at 2:04 a.m. EDT

CNN-April 19th 2022

TEHRAN, Iran — During its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran embraced the protest cry of “neither East nor West,” rejecting both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then locked in the Cold War. The phrase to this day hangs over the doors of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Russia’s war on Ukraine, however, has exposed just how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow in recent years as the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers stoked decades-old, hard-line anger at America. Members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard train on Russian surface-to-air missile systems and aircraft. Hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on one of his first trips abroad.

The war also exposes deeper fault lines even within Iran’s domestic politics. Among ordinary Iranians, there is a great deal of sympathy for Ukraine, a nation that staged a pro-democracy “Orange Revolution” similar to the “Green Revolution” that shook Iran more than a decade ago but was forcefully put down.

Iran’s historic enmity with Russia has combined with a wider feeling among some that backing Moscow betrays the Islamic Republic’s often-stated message that it stands against the world’s major powers.

“We have to help oppressed people of Ukraine as we do support people of Palestine and Yemen simply because they are targeted by powers,” said Zohreh Ahmadi, a mother of two in downtown Tehran’s Sarcheshmeh neighborhood. “A bullying power is killing children and women in Ukraine.”

Iran’s state-controlled television network, whose English-language service Press TV describes itself as “the voice of the voiceless,” hews close to Russian talking points. It used Moscow’s euphemistic term “special operation” to describe the war’s early days. Stories referencing the killings of civilians in Bucha by Russian forces include headlines falsely describing it as a “fake attack” or “provocation” on Press TV’s website.

Part of the Iranian government’s anger at Ukraine likely stems from the aftermath of the Guard’s 2020 shooting down of an Ukrainian airliner, which killed 176 people on board. Tehran denied for days it shot down the plane before saying troops made a mistake after Iran fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq in response for the killing of a top general.