THE UNCOMFORTABLE REALITY OF RUSSIA AND IRAN’S NEW DEFENSE RELATIONSHIP

War on the Rock-July24th2024

On April 2, 2024, Ukraine’s military struck several buildings in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan region. The strike demonstrated Ukraine’s steadily improving ability to hold targets deep inside Russia at risk. But it was also a stark reminder of just how far Iranian-Russian defense cooperation has come since 2022: As of last year, Russia has indigenized the production of Iranian-designed Shahed drones at Alabuga — practicing a degree of cooperation with Tehran that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The Shaheds and other Iranian-origin drones deployed by Russia have created a severe headache for Ukraine, leading its military planners to resort to the April strike.

From the 1990s to 2022, Russia provided, off and on, important military assistance to Iran across the ground, aerospace, and naval domains, largely focused on hardware instead of technology transfers. In addition to Russian support to Iran’s nuclear program, this assistance included the provision of tanks, armored vehicles, anti-tank missiles, combat aircraft, helicopters, and surface-to-air missiles, among others. Assistance — at least in the 1990s — also entailed unofficial transfers by low-level Russian entities to Iran’s ballistic missile and suspected chemical and biological weapons programs.

Since 2022, Russia’s defense relationship with Iran has taken a big leap forward. Cooperation has moved past the previous patron-client dynamic, with Iran emerging as a key enabler of Russia’s air and ground campaign in Ukraine. Military-technical collaboration has intensified in existing areas, while also advancing to new frontiers such as the joint development of novel uncrewed aerial vehicles. Amid a general weakening of past constraints on cooperation, Iran and Russia have also taken steps to further institutionalize their defense relationship.

Western capitals should accept an uncomfortable reality: Even if Russia’s war against Ukraine were to end, there is little hope that the Iran-Russia defense relationship will revert to its pre-2022 status quo. Both countries have identified needs for future military contingencies that they can help each other meet — even if Iran will continue to be more reliant on advanced technology from Russia than vice versa. Traditional instruments such as diplomatic pressure or sanctions are unlikely to be effective in checking this cooperation so long as both Iran and Russia view Washington and its allies as their main adversaries.

As a result, the best the United States and its partners can do is to disrupt this cooperation on the margins and focus on undermining it in the most sensitive areas. Specifically, Washington should focus on complicating Iran’s and Russia’s procurement of electronics for high-end defense goods and seek to derail or deter impending deals or deliveries through strategic disclosures.

Brothers in Arms

Since February 2022, the Iranian-Russian defense relationship has expanded both in degree and in kind. Pre-existing areas of cooperation — such as electronic warfare, space, or cyber — have seen increased activity. In August 2022 and February 2024, Russia launched imaging satellites for Iran and has committed to aid Iran’s space program in additional ways, including through a December 2022 agreement. Russia has helped Iran with GPS denial and jamming capabilities, sharing lessons from its own electronic warfare efforts in Syria. Russia has also continued to deliver conventional weapons to Iran, providing it with Yak-130 training aircraft last September. To be sure, cooperation in these areas has been underway for years, having received a boost with the expiration of the conventional arms embargo against Iran in October 2020. At the time, Moscow reacted negatively to U.S. efforts to extend the embargo and Russian experts signaled that Russia could step up its defense cooperation with Iran.

Since February 2022, however, cooperation has taken an even more significant leap forward, with Iran and Russia collaborating in entirely new areas. Iran’s provision of drones, drone production technology, and drone training to Russia has received considerable international attention, given its impact on the Ukrainian battlefield. As of May 2024, the Russian armed forces had launched at least 4,000 Iranian-designed Shahed drones against Ukraine. Less noted, though, is Iran’s multifaceted support for Russia’s ground war, including through artillery shells, small-arms ammunition, anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs, and glide bombs. This shows how Russia can benefit from Iranian aid in terms of quantity, if not quality.