A Daily Briefing on Iran: The Future of Russian-Iranian Relations

Pavel Simonov, Axis Information and Analysis:

Cardinal changes in the Russian-Iranian relations are not in the view, says Russia's provisional charge d'affaires in Tehran Aleksey Dedov in the interview to the Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily. "Short after his election, Ahmadinejad personally confirmed the successiveness of Iranian leadership's strategic line towards further development of mutually beneficial and multidirectional cooperation with Russia," Dedov stated.

According to him, Russian-Iranian relations reached a high level during the last years, and are presently developing in the sphere of regional and international political collaboration, as well as in the sphere of Hi-tech, education, and culture. "Moreover, a favorable political background also encourages active development of trade and economic links," Dedov claims, bringing some statistics: volume of trade in the last year grew by 43 per cent compared to 2003, and exceeded $2 billion. As the examples of a fruitful bilateral cooperation the Russian diplomat calls the nuclear reactor in Busher, telecommunications satellite "Zohre" (Venus), joint projects in the framework of International Transport Corridor (ITC) "South-North".

Caspian Sea

Russian charge d'affaires in Iran emphasizes that a particular attention was always paid to this topic. According to him, "The events of the last decades resulted in the necessity to define a new legal regime for the Caspian Sea that was previously regulated solely by the bilateral Russian-Iranian agreements. "On the one hand, the significance of this sea as of the energy and bio-resources' stock has grown. On the other hand, destabilization in the Southern Caucasus, in the Middle East, and in the Central Asia, connected particularly to the activity of the underground terrorist international, drawn the attention of many non-regional countries to the Caspian Sea. Now they try to influence the events that are happening there," Russian diplomat urges.

Against such background, Russia's and Iran's cooperation with other states of the Caspian region in the sphere of security and stability maintenance seems particularly important. "Moscow came forward with the initiative to create joint operational naval forces on the Caspian Sea (CASFOR) to prevent the threat of terrorism, WMD proliferation, drugs traffic, and to protect the ecological interests of the region."

According to Aleksey Dedov, there is some advancement towards a consensus on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Up to 80 per cent of the Convention text is already worked out. But still there are such principal issues as "the jurisdiction of the national and fishing zones, militarization of the Caspian, transit of military and civil vessels", on which the sides do not agree.

Central Asia

"Russia views Iran solely as its regional partner, and not as a challenger," Russian charge d'affaires says, adding that it is not by chance that "the highest level of trustworthiness between the two states can be seen in such key issues as international security, disarmament, WMD nonproliferation, and fight against terrorism and extremism."

According to Aleksey Dedov, economic activity of Iran in regions close to that of the Caspian Sea is not concurrent to Russia's activity there. He gives some examples of joint Russian-Iranian or parallel projects. One of them is the recent signing by Iran and Tajikistan of a memorandum settling the construction of a hydroelectric power station "Sangtude – 2" on Vakhsh river. This contract is worth $220 million, and $180 million of this sum is provided by Iran. Russia constructs a hydra-power station "Sangtude – 1" on the same river, more powerful and expensive.

Dedov points out that against the background of crisis situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in a number of Central-Asian and South-Caucasian republics, "Iran in fact is an island of a relative stability in the center of perhaps the most unstable region in the world." READ MORE

Iranian nuclear program

Aleksey Dedov explains that Russia does not directly participate in the negotiations between the European 'troika' (France, Germany, UK) and Iran on this issue. "It [Russia] has its own parallel line," he says. In charge of keeping this "line", according to Dedov, is the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Russia's main "nuclear negotiator", Sergey Kislyak. He comes to Tehran on a regular basis, and receives the relevant Iranian delegations in Moscow. His last visit to Tehran was in May, and was a very important one, according to Dedov. Iranian-European dialogue was then close to a collapse, Iranian side declaring its readiness to resume uranium enrichment. "After very uneasy talks, it was managed to make the Iranians take a more constructive position."