close button
Switch to Iranwire Light?
It looks like you’re having trouble loading the content on this page. Switch to Iranwire Light instead.
Politics

Neighbors but not Friends: Gilan, Gorbachev, and 8 Other Russian-Iranian Encounters

October 17, 2014
Roland Elliott Brown
7 min read
The signing ceremony for the Treaty of Turkmenchai, which ended the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28.
The signing ceremony for the Treaty of Turkmenchai, which ended the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28.
A postage stamp from the Soviet Republic of Gilan.
A postage stamp from the Soviet Republic of Gilan.
A Soviet tank in Tabriz. At the end of the Second World War, Stalin refused to remove troops from Iran's north unless Iran agreed to an oil concession.
A Soviet tank in Tabriz. At the end of the Second World War, Stalin refused to remove troops from Iran's north unless Iran agreed to an oil concession.
The KGB claimed to have arranged the Shah's introduction to Farah Diba, who became his third wife. It mistakenly believed she might have communist sympathies.
The KGB claimed to have arranged the Shah's introduction to Farah Diba, who became his third wife. It mistakenly believed she might have communist sympathies.
Khomeini sent Ayatollah Javadi Amoli to deliver his message to Gorbachev.
Khomeini sent Ayatollah Javadi Amoli to deliver his message to Gorbachev.
Vladimir Putin was quick to recognise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term, but came to see him as ungrateful.
Vladimir Putin was quick to recognise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term, but came to see him as ungrateful.
Hassan Rouhani and Vladimir Putin.
Hassan Rouhani and Vladimir Putin.

It has been five years since Iranian protesters chanted “Death to Russia” in protest against Russia’s support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second presidential term, yet even as Russia expands its antipathies toward the United States and the European Union, Russia’s history limits its ability to get close to Iran. From Russian imperial conquests and interventions in the 19th century, to Soviet support for separatist groups and the communist Tudeh Party in the 20th, Iranians have a long memory for Russian interference in their country’s affairs. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, feels a certain affinity for Iran as a “great country,” and Russia, as a neighbor and participant in the P5+1 group, will continue to influence Iran’s future.

 

1. The Russian Empire humiliated Iran militarily and politically.

In the 19th century, The Russian Empire defeated Persia’s ruling Qajar dynasty in a series of wars, annexing Persian territory in the Caucasus. Under the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), Russia took control of provinces in modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan, and claimed the exclusive right to maintain warships on the Caspian Sea. Under the Treaty of Turkmenchai (1828) Russia took further territory in lands now belonging to Armenia and Azerbaijan, and asserted extraterritorial rights over Iran itself. Russia dominated Iran’s north into the early 20th century, and sought to stifle the country’s first democratic experiment—its constitutional movement—by supporting the Qajar despot Muhammad Ali Shah, and shelling the Iranian parliament in 1908.

 

2. Russian communists established a Soviet republic in Iran’s north.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and its takeover by communist Bolsheviks the same year, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin denounced Russian imperialism in Persia. His new regime withdrew Russian troops from Iran and repudiated Russia’s privileges on Iranian territory. But as revolution led to civil war in Russia, anti-Bolshevik forces used northern Iran as a base. The Bolsheviks’ Red Army attacked them at the Iranian Caspian port of Anzali, and moved into the northern Iranian province of Gilan. There, they formed an alliance with Mirza Kuchek Khan, leader of the pan-Islamist Jangali guerrilla movement. Kuchek accepted Bolshevik help to establish the Soviet Republic of Gilan in June 1920, but soon fell out with the communists. Moscow abandoned the project, and Tehran regained control in 1921.

 

3. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin supported Kurdish and Azeri independence from Tehran.

During its occupation of Iran’s north in the Second World War, the Soviet Union supported independence movements in the Iranian parts of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan. When the war ended, Soviet premier Josef Stalin refused to withdraw Soviet troops from these northern regions despite British and American objections, and sparked one of the early conflicts of the Cold War. Both minorities had legitimate complaints about the level of recognition Iran’s central government afforded them, but Stalin used them cynically, as a bargaining chip with which to negotiate access to Iranian oil reserves. To persuade the Soviets to leave, the Shah promised Stalin Soviet involvement in the Iranian petroleum sector. After Stalin had abandoned Iran’s Azeris and Kurds, however, the Iranian parliament rejected Soviet involvement at the Shah’s behest.

 

4. The Shah feared a communist takeover in Iran.

After the Second World War, the Shah allied himself to the United States, in part for protection against Soviet ambitions. In 1955, Iran joined the Baghdad Pact (later known as the Central Treaty Organization), a US-backed alliance between Britain, Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan that was designed to prevent Soviet infiltration of the Middle East. Moscow, for its part, guided the policies of Iran’s outlawed communist Tudeh Party. In a 1973 interview, the Shah described the existential threat he believed the Soviets posed: “With the Russians, Iran must keep in mind the chief dilemma: to become communist or not? No one can be so crazy or naïve as to deny Russian imperialism...There’s their dream of reaching the Indian Ocean by passing through the Persian Gulf.”

 

5. The KGB introduced the Shah to Queen Farah (or so it claimed).

According to the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of notes on Soviet intelligence the former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin smuggled to Britain in 1992, the KGB claimed one of its agents had persuaded the Iranian cultural attaché in Paris to introduce the Shah to Farah Diba, who became his third wife in 1959. The Soviet spy agency mistakenly believed Farah to have communist sympathies because she had communist friends, and had joined protests against French imperialism in Algeria. In fact, she found her communist peers too dour. “They seemed to be against the whole world...You would have thought that...there was nothing worth keeping on this planet apart from the Soviet Union,” she later recalled.

 

6. The Soviet Union was the first country to recognize the Islamic Republic (but it didn’t get much in return).

The Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Iran’s new regime after the Iranian Revolution. Despite Soviet dislike of religious radicalism, and Khomeini’s attacks on the Soviet Union as “the Lesser Satan,” Soviet leaders presented the revolution in Soviet media as an anti-American revolution. Khomeini, meanwhile, adopted the slogan “Neither East nor West,” which positioned Iran as a non-joiner with either of the superpowers of his time. He also made clear his anti-communism and abhorrence of Soviet atheism. In 1982, the Islamic Republic smashed the Tudeh Party, arresting thousands of its members and executing many of them. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, Khomeini was among the first leaders to send support to Hazara Shiite Muslims fighting the occupation.

 

7. Khomeini advised Gorbachev to embrace Islam.

In January 1989, with the Cold War coming to an end, Khomeini wrote to Mikhail Gorbachev, advising him that, since communism was finished, he should study Islam. He recommended in particular the works of the mystical philosopers Ibn Arabi, Avicenna, and Sohravardi. Gorbachev received the message politely, even remarking that he was proud to be the only foreign leader to receive such a message. Back in Iran, the letter brought Khomeini into conflict with members of the orthodox clergy in Qom, who accused him of undermining the authority of the Quran by referring Gorbachev to mystics.

 

8. Iran stayed silent over Russia’s war in Chechnya.

When Boris Yeltsin sent troops into the breakaway Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya in the Russian Caucasus in 1994, and when Vladimir Putin launched the Second Chechen War in 1999, Iran stayed largely silent, despite its revolutionary principle of proclaiming solidarity with Muslim struggles. Chechens are Sunni Muslims, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies—Iran’s adversaries backed the rebel movement. Iran also shared with Russia a susceptibility to secessionist nationalism on its own territory in the same region among its Kurdish and Azeri minorities.

 

9. Putin disliked Ahmadinejad, but likes Iran’s style.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, Vladimir Putin took cheer at his anti-Westernism, but later came to see him as irresponsible and ungrateful. Following contested elections in Iran in 2009, Russia was quick to recognize Ahmadinejad’s second term; Ahmadinejad repaid the favor by demanding Russian reparations for occupying Iran during the Second World War. In a roundtable interview with pro-Kremlin journalists for the Kremlin-supported channel Russia Today, Putin publicly rebuked Ahmadinejad for his “unacceptable” remarks about Israel, but also expressed admiration for Iran as a “great country” with “very smart and cunning politicians,” who have, he said, exploited their confrontation with the United States to tackle domestic issues.

 

10. Russia likes the nuclear dispute the way it is.

Russia sees the United States’ challenge to Iran’s nuclear program as a mask for its desire for a more pro-western government in Tehran. While Russia does not wish to see a nuclear-armed power on its border, and participates in the P5+1 negotiations, it likely prefers the status quo to an improvement in relations between Iran and the West that might come at Russia’s expense. Earlier this month, Ali Younesi, a former intelligence minister and current adviser to Hassan Rouhani, told Fars News that he is not optimistic about negotiations in, part because “Some countries that appear as friends, such as Russia and China, are not inclined at all for the negotiations to reach a conclusion.”

 

This article is an edited version of A Little More East than West: Iran and Russia

comments

Politics

Iran Intelligence Revelations: How Khamenei Wields Power

October 17, 2014
8 min read
Iran Intelligence Revelations: How Khamenei Wields Power