Podcast: What did Russia Get from the Iran Deal? (Script)

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You’re listening to Iran’s Weekly Wire; I’m Roland Elliott Brown.

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The Islamic Revolution of 1979 made Iran the enemy of two great powers: Washington, and Moscow.

But while everyone knows about the revolutionary slogan, “Death to America”, few recall the Ayatollah Khomeini's Cold War slogan, “Neither East nor West.”

36 years later, that slogan seems less relevant than ever. Iran has just signed a deal with both the US and Russia, along with four other major powers, over its nuclear program.

Since then, there has been plenty of talk about better relations between Iran and the West.  

But that leaves out one important question: What did Russia get from the Iran deal?

This week, I spoke to two independent experts, one American, one Russian, to find out.

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To start, I spoke to Nikolay Kozhanov, a visiting fellow at Chatham House, and a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

He worked as an attache at the Russian Embassy in Tehran from 2006 to 2009. But he doesn’t represent the Kremlin now.

I asked him what Russia’s objectives were, going into the talks.

[Nikolay Kozhanov] The Russians, from the very beginning they stated that they are not interested in an Iran armed with a nuclear bomb, because it would be absolutely different country on one hand. On the other hand, Iran with a WMD weapon would also set quite a negative example for other less stable countries in the region, that would immediately try to acquire a nuclear weapon as well, or any other WMD. So it was not an option from the very beginning.

But Iran is also Russia’s neighbor. And the nuclear dispute made Russia worry about unrest in its neighborhood.

[Nikolay Kozhanov] They were interested in the elimination of potential threats that could be related to the destabilisation of Iran as a result of military operations conducted by the West or as a result of the economic destabilisation of Iran as a result of sanctions adopted against Tehran. The conflict as a possible outcome of the nuclear crisis was considered especially real during the period of 2006 to 2008, I just know it from my personal experience. I personally consider that this threat was a bit exaggerated, especially the belief that there will be a huge flow of refugees from Iran towards the post-Soviet Union space, but still that's what the Russian authorities believed.

I also spoke to Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University in Virginia. He’s written extensively about Russia’s relations with Iran.

Before the nuclear deal was signed, he told IranWire that Russia wasn’t that keen to solve the nuclear issue. He said Russia didn’t want Iran getting too friendly with the West.

He thinks Russia never viewed the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb with the same alarm that the US did.

[Mark N. Katz] I think like everyone else, they don't really want Iran to have one. No nuclear power wants to see other countries acquire nuclear weapons. On the other hand in past conversations I've had in Moscow, is that they didn't understand the American concern, in other words, if the US can live with a nuclear Pakistan, they consider that country much more problematic than Iran, and therefore, if the US can get along with a nuclear Pakistan, it can get along with a nuclear Iran as well. A nuclear Pakistan is actually worse for Russia than a nuclear Iran, and so they doubted the sincerity of the American concern.

He also doubts Russia needed the deal as much as the US did.

[Mark N. Katz] For them the worst case scenario was not that talks would fail. They would have been prepared for that, to take advantage of that. The most important thing for them, even in this climate where Russia's relations with the West are deteriorating, they were supportive of the talks mainly because Iran wants this. Iran wanted to make a deal. For Russia to somehow block an agreement wouldn't have worked. The Iranians wouldn't have thanked them, and I think the danger for Russia was that Iran and the West would just go and make a deal anyway, and that Russia would look unimportant and marginal. So as long as Iran wants to do this, they had to be supportive.

And for Russia, the Iran talks were less about Iran itself than about big geopolitical issues.

Most of them had more to do with Moscow’s struggles with Washington than its views of Tehran.

One issue was a long-running fight over planned US anti-ballistic missile systems in Eastern Europe.

Whenever the US proposed the plan, they said it was to defend against Iran, not Russia. But the Russians never believed it.

[Mark N. Katz] the argument was, we need to protect the West from an Iranian missile attack. The Russian reaction was yeah, right, that the Iranians weren't going to do that even if they acquired nuclear weapons, and that the ballistic missile defence program was really aimed at Russia. The Russians felt that the American claim that Iran was a threat was insincere, and the western view that Russians believed that the West is a threat to Russia is ludicrous, but of course the Russians do believe it.

Barack Obama cancelled the missile defence scheme in 2009. But there is always the chance a future president will revive it.

Now the Iran deal has deprived the US of any excuse to install missiles near Russia’s borders, at least as far as Russia is concerned.

And then there is the conflict in Ukraine. It has been going on since 2014, and has brought Russia’s relations with the West to a new low. Russia has faced western sanctions as a result.

But Russia was able to use the nuclear negotiations as leverage on that front. It was able to limit western support for the government in Kiev.

[Nikolay Kozhanov] Definitely the situation in Ukraine severely affected Russian approaches toward Iran and toward the nuclear issue. The Russians they needed to demonstrate that they are an important power in terms of settling quite a number of issues not related to Ukraine, and this was kind of a signal to the West that the Americans should not go further in the confrontation with Ukraine in order to have Russians on board for the settlement of other questions and issues, and Iran was one of the grounds where the Russians clearly demonstrated that they can be a team player.

The nuclear talks allowed Russia to tell the West, and the international community, “You need Russia.”

And in the eyes of the world, Russia always wants to be seen sitting at the top table:

[Mark N. Katz] If we look at the nuclear talks, especially the new stories about it, one thing that is striking is that whenever they hit some kind of snag, the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain, Germany, would leave. Sometimes the French would stay, sometimes not. The negotiations were really between Iran and the United States. The whole P5 +1 process was really sort of a fig leaf, to make it look like Iran was talking to the international community and not just talking to America. But that's what occurred. So as we've seen with other multilateral conflict resolution negotiations, that the Russians are resentful that they don't have a primary role. On the other hand, they want to be seen as being part of this. Just the image that Russia is a great power is important to maintain, even if they are not providing much substantively.

Now that the deal is done, international sanctions against Iran will be lifted. Most countries are sizing up economic opportunities in Iran.

For Russia, prospects are decidedly mixed. On one hand, Russia will be able to invest freely in Iran.

On the other hand, Iran can now compete against Russia’s lucrative oil and gas trade with Europe.

Here’s how Mark Katz weighs up Russia’s outlook:

[Mark N. Katz] With Iran opening up economically there are possibilities for Russia as well, in terms of selling atomic energy plants, perhaps selling weapons, selling all kinds of things, and of course the Russians have put a halt on buying agricultural produce from the West in general, they have been buying more agricultural produce from Iran, so they want to be able to do that even more. There are benefits. The big disadvantage is that as we saw, once the deal was announced, the price of oil dropped. This is the biggest negative for Russia. With Iranian supplies coming back onto the world market, this tends to depress prices, and of course Russia's income largely depends on  petroleum exports. but this is something that couldn’t be avoided, and so Russia just has to make the best of it.

But Nikolay Kozhanov doesn’t see it that way.

[Nikolai Kozhanov] In terms of economic situation, the question is a bit more complicated. From long term perspective definitely Iran may represent a challenge for Russia both on oil and gas market, but due to obvious technical reasons Iran will probably be unable to enter the European gas market for the next 5 years, and the export of gas resources is not its top priority. Its top priority is to satisfy domestic demand and use natural gas to sustain oil output, and this requires quite a lot of resources and efforts and time definitely. Russia will have time to prepare for this scenario. It’s still not clear in what direction, to Europe or to Asia, Iran will export gas. Asian natural gas market is much more appealing than European one.

And as long as Russia is facing sanctions over Ukraine, it may need to rely on Iran more than it used to.

[Nikolai Kozhanov] Iran acquired a certain importance for the Russian business, because after the begin of economic crisis, and problems Russia experienced in regard to its economy, definitely Russian business started to count every rouble, and Iranian market, especially the nuclear energy sector, the arms market, represents quite an appealing market for Russian business. So from this point of view, the Russians acquired an additional incentive for being quite active in settling the nuclear issue and lifting the sanctions.

One of the big questions everyone is asking about the nuclear deal is how it will change Iran’s attitudes to other countries.

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 brought to the surface Iran’s fear and mistrust of the big powers that misused it in the past.

Now, it looks like Iran may be ready to choose new friends.

Will Russia be one of them? Here’s Mark Katz.

[Mark N. Katz] In general it strikes me that Iranians, if anything, tend to look down on Russians. Toward the West they have a love hate rel, there are lots of things they don't like about the West, the west has done terrible things, but they want to go to paris, london, ny, they want to send their children to university. lots of things about west they find attractive. They don't find anything attractive about Russia...young Iranians are not clamoring to go to univ in Russia The Russians worry that if Iran is closer to the West, then it will have less reason to cooperate with Russia. What they see in the past is that even with hostile relations between Iran and the West, Iranian governments have often been rude to russia. Just think how they might act if they have better relations with the west. Is that going to make them more polite to Russia? I don't think so.

On the other hand, there are no signs that Iran’s leaders want to get close to the US.

[Nikolay Kozhanov] From the mid term perspective, I do not see these negative scenarios happening. In terms of political dialogue between Iran and the US, the recent statements by the supreme leader, they quite obviously demonstrated that there is a huge mistrust in the relations between the 2 countries, so under the current supreme leader, under the current team, it's hardly possible to see Iran becoming the partner of the United States in the Middle East.

In any case, Russia is planning to make the best of the Iran deal.

On July 30th, Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin reassured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the deal.

He said the deal provided  "solid guarantees that the Iranian nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful". He said it would "positively impact the security and stability of the Middle East".

Right now, Putin sounds more sure about the deal than the US Congress.

Congress could still vote to throw out the deal in September.

And Katz thinks that would be a great gift to Russia:

[Mark N. Katz] What Russians would take advantage of is if the Republicans in the American Congress were somehow able to block the agreement, we know what would happen, the Iranians would quickly blame the US. Not just the Iranians, but much of the world would blame US. It wouldn't be Iran that was isolated, it would be the United States that would be isolated. T    he sanctions regime would collapse. American sanctions would stay but no one else would tolerate these sanctions any longer, it really would be for the us something very bad indeed. Russia can't bring this situation about, but if it occurs, Russia will definitely take advantage of it.

Even so, this deal marks a rare moment in modern history. There is now one issue on which the leaders of the US, Russia, and Iran are all on the same page.

Whereas once Iran’s slogan was “Neither East nor West,” Iran’s leaders now look ready to have big powers compete for their affections.

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That’s all from Iran’s Weekly Wire. If you want to find out more about this story, join us on Twitter or Facebook, or visit IranWire.com