Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to visit Moscow on Friday for talks with strongman Vladimir Putin, which both governments confirmed would include the signing of a new “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty.”
Pezeshkian, who is subordinate to Iranian “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is currently on a regional tour including a stop in Tajikistan on Thursday before his arrival in Russia. International observers are watching the Iranian-Russian meeting with anticipation as the Kremlin and Tehran both teased the new “partnership treaty” as significantly reinforcing the close ties that already exist between the two rogue states, particularly on the economic front.
Iran and Russia have long maintained a diplomatic relationship and supported each other’s goals internationally. Together, they were the key allies responsible for keeping Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in power for over a decade of civil war; Assad’s regime fell to the jihadist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in December. The two countries are also members of the anti-American BRICS coalition, where Pezeshkian proclaimed the coalition hoped to “neutralize” American interests.
The two countries are upgrading their ties officially to replace a 24-year-old cooperation deal, the “Treaty of the Foundation of Mutual Relations and the Principles of Cooperation,” that was supposed to last ten years but expires in 2026 after several extensions. The Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV reported on Monday that the new comprehensive agreement will focus heavily on multiple economic sectors and facilitate trade to help keep both floundering economies afloat.
“The agreement covers multiple areas, including economy, transportation, energy, healthcare and agriculture,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday, “as well as cooperation in the field of common challenges such as organized crime, and terrorism and dealing with climate change.”
The agreement is expected to last at least 20 years.
One field that the deal will not cover, Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali said on Thursday, is direct military aid. The agreement will not include any mutual defense provisions, Jalali told reporters, according to the Russian news agency Tass. International observers had expressed some concern that Moscow and Tehran could agree to such a mutual defense provision as Russia has signed similar agreements with fellow rogue states in recent memory, most prominently with North Korea in June.
The signing of the North Korean mutual defense deal, which occurred during a visit by Putin to Pyongyang, preceded Ukraine reporting the presence of thousands of North Korean soldiers on its borders, fighting alongside Russians in the ongoing invasion of that country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced last week that his troops had captured at least two North Korean soldiers alive.
“The nature of this agreement is different,” Jalali insisted. “[With North Korea], they established cooperation in a number of areas we did not really focus on. Our country’s independence and security, as well as reliance on our own strength, are very important.”
“We are not interested in joining any blocs,” Jalali said, a year after Iran joined the BRICS coalition. “In 45 years, we have paid a [heavy] price for the independence of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The deal will include, Jalali shared, a note on respecting the “territorial integrity” of both countries, which would indicate that Iran would accept Russia’s false claims over sovereign Ukrainian territory.
Top Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did list “military” cooperation, without offering specifics, as part of the new comprehensive agreement in remarks to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on Wednesday.
“The areas of cooperation will include military, political, trade, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, and humanitarian activities,” he reportedly said.
In addition to signing the agreement, the Kremlin press service explained in a statement on Thursday that Peseshkian and Putin would discuss the war between Israel and Iran’s proxies in Gaza, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and other “developments in the Middle East.”
“Russian-Iranian relations are on a rise, intensively developing under the principles of mutual respect and due regard for interests,” the statement emphasized, according to the news service Interfax.
Jalali independently highlighted in a separate interview on Thursday that finding a way to pay for bilateral trade outside of the SWIFT international payment system, from which Russia has been banned over the Ukraine invasion, is on the docket for the two leaders.
“The situation in banking and currency cooperation has significantly improved,” he said. “At the moment, we are working on a confidential financial messaging channel to completely get rid of SWIFT.”
The timing of Pezeshkian’s trip has caused some concern, as it arrives immediately before the anticipated inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on Monday. Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov insisted in remarks on Wednesday that the agreement the two parties will sign, and the visit to complete the partnership, is meant to benefit Russia and Iran, not to hurt the United States.
“This treaty, like the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Russian Federation and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is not directed against any third country,” Lavrov told reporters. “It is constructive and aims to enable both Russia and Iran, as well as our friends in various parts of the world, to better develop their economies, address social issues, and ensure reliable defence capabilities.”
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