Erdogan, Putin heading to Tehran: Is new alliance in Middle East possible?
Analysis by Serhey Bohdan

ANALYTICS  18 July 2022 - 13:24

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Tehran this week. Comments of a geopolitical nature have already been voiced about the Kremlin challenging the West together with the Middle Eastern states. Many are linking Putin's upcoming visit to Tehran to statements by US officials about the upcoming delivery of Iranian drones to Russia. Others see the Tehran meeting as a response to US President Joe Biden's trip to Iran's opponents Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Meeting in front of witnesses

In fact, Putin is going to Iran, so to speak, "for the occasion." Namely, he is going to the July 19 meeting of the heads of the guarantors of the "Astana Process". Russia, Iran, and Türkiye are all involved in this process for a settlement in Syria. Since 2017, the presidents of the three countries have met annually in one of the capitals to discuss the situation in Syria. In 2020, these meetings were interrupted because of the coronavirus.

Therefore, the main topic of Putin's visit is exactly what was announced - the situation in Syria. A number of issues have accumulated here. First, the possible introduction of Turkish troops into the north of this country, with which Ankara is in no hurry, perhaps expecting Moscow to still fulfill its promise to remove the units of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Türkiye considers a terrorist organization, from the Syrian-Turkish border. Second is the Israeli government's dissatisfaction with the strengthening of Iranian influence in Syria, which Tel Aviv voices in its contacts with the Russian government. Third is discontent of Iran and the Assad regime with Russia's indifference to more frequent Israeli attacks on Syrian territory.

In addition to the trilateral summit, Putin will, of course, have a separate meeting with the Iranian leadership as his stay in Tehran obliges. It is significant that throughout his political career this was the only way the Russian leader visited Iran - exclusively as part of multilateral events on gas, the Caspian Sea, and so on. This was in line with Putin's policy of not angering the West on issues that are of secondary importance to the Kremlin, even "after the Crimea".

The fact that even now Putin has not decided to go to Iran with a full-fledged visit, but only "on occasion" and with Erdogan "for company's sake" is also not surprising. First, Russia is not going to expand the scope of its confrontation with the "global West" to the Middle East or anywhere else. By choosing the format of the upcoming visit to Iran (as well as not recognizing the Taliban, limiting rapprochement with Cuba and other similar states in Latin America, etc.) the Kremlin is showing the West this position.

Second, Putin is not welcome in Tehran with open arms. It should be recalled that historically Iran has always kept a safe distance from Russia (and the USSR), even when both countries were in opposition to the West. In recent years the Iranian side has always stressed that its interests in the Middle East in general, and in Syria in particular, only occasionally converge with those of Russia. Iranian officials have explicitly said that the Russians are fighting "their own war" in Syria and that neither the Iranian military nor its allies are going to become "Putin's foot soldiers". Coordination over Syria, they said, has always been about trying to avoid hitting each other. Heshmatullah Falahatpishe, chairman of the National Security Commission of the Iranian parliament, once said after the Syrian civil war that even within the framework of the operation to save the Assad regime, Russian-Iranian cooperation remained only an alliance "without any special obligations".

In Eastern Europe, too, Iran was in no hurry to support Putin. Tehran did not recognize the annexation of Crimea, the proclamation of the so-called "DPR," "LPR," South Ossetia, and Abkhazia. And even while blaming US policy for the Ukrainian crisis, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did not endorse Russian actions but called for a cease-fire in Ukraine.

Now Tehran certainly has no more reasons to welcome the Russian leader, rather the opposite. Russia, which is in a confrontation with the West and is under harsh sanctions, has lost some of its attractiveness for Iran (ceasing to be a "window to the world" for sanctioned Tehran), and its interests have clashed even more strongly with Iranian ones.

Competition between Russia and Iran

Because of Western sanctions, Moscow was forced to redirect its oil exports from Europe to Asia, becoming the largest oil supplier to China as early as May, pushing back the former leader, pro-Western Saudi Arabia. But this also hit Iran and Venezuela, two other opponents of the "global West," which also fled Western pressure through cooperation with Asian countries.

According to the New York Times, Russian oil competition has already forced the Iranians and Venezuelans to increase discounts on their oil so as not to be left without buyers. And yet Iranian oil shipments to China have fallen by more than a third compared to the prewar period, and Iranian exports to Asia were only about 700,000 barrels per day in June - half of what was budgeted in Iran's annual budget.

It is unclear how much China paid Iran for this oil, and the drop in supplies does not mean that Tehran lost the same amount of revenue. World oil prices have soared, and even with the discount given by the Iranians to Beijing, they are making more money per barrel. But all the same, if it were not for the arrival of Russian energy carriers in Asian markets, Iran would have earned more by selling larger volumes of oil. Indirectly the losses are also indicated by the official Iranian statistics, according to which in the first two months of the Iranian year (which began on March 21) the country's revenues were only 37% of the planned. Given the leading position of oil and gas in these revenues, the figures are remarkable.

And perhaps most importantly for the global political narrative - this situation objectively creates opportunities for Iranian and Venezuelan oil to return to Western markets. The latter would be a nightmare for the Kremlin. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West has once again begun contact with Venezuela, and the relevant probing for a behind-the-scenes agreement continues.

With Iran, everything is more complicated because of its nuclear program, but even there we cannot rule out some kind of agreement that would allow redirecting part of the Iranian oil to the needs of the West, especially through a third country. Therefore, when negotiating with the Iranian leadership, Putin will first have to make sure that Iranian oil is not substituted for Russian oil. The fact that the Kremlin will not calmly observe the attempts to replace Russian energy carriers in the West became clear from the recent events around Kazakhstan's oil exports.

Uniting the opponents of the West

The consolidation of the West's opponents seems obvious. Judging by the rhetoric, Moscow is ideologically moving in the direction of Tehran. On Friday, for example, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov spoke of the need to "turn from a market-based industrial policy to a policy of technological sovereignty." At first glance, this sounded almost like a quote from Iranian discussions of the "economy of resistance," if not earlier concepts of "jihad for self-sufficiency."

But in reality, one can hardly expect any serious results from Putin's visit to Tehran. We should note that although some Russian media outlets insist that "the topic of military-technical cooperation will undoubtedly arise during the Russian President's visit to Iran as well," we can hardly expect serious results in this area. After all, the Kremlin is trying to maintain the best possible relations with Iran's opponents - Israel and the conservative Arab regimes - who will not like such a move at all. And why arm Tehran with Russian weapons, if, as it seems to the Kremlin, it will not go anywhere, being subject to sanctions? For the same reasons, rumors of the imminent signing of a treaty on strategic cooperation between Russia and Iran are equally dubious.

More realistic seems the signing of documents on the interaction of banking systems in the context of Western pressure, as well as agreements aimed at increasing trade turnover (so far it is only $4 billion a year). These are all routine activities in the face of Western pressure on both of these countries. They will continue other "firefighting" measures taken by Moscow and Tehran in recent months. This week, for example, Mohammadreza Pur-Ebrahimi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's economic commission, announced that Russia and Iran had abandoned the use of the dollar in mutual trade and were switching to their national currencies. At the end of May, an agreement was reached to merge Iran's Shetab and Russia's Mir payment system.

This looks rather weak against the background of the lack of coordination of Russian and Iranian oil and gas exports (and, in the future, other states close to both of these countries - particularly Venezuela), which could lead to the formation of a new power bloc in world politics. After all, the consequences of pushing Russian resources for Western economies are already quite tangible. But what would happen if Russia's energy resources were pushed out of the market?

The first attempts to coordinate energy exports with Iran were made back in Soviet times. In the 1970s, Brezhnev even reached an agreement with the Shah of Iran to build a Soviet-Iranian gas pipeline, through which Iranian gas could subsequently reach the European market. The revolution in Iran and the collapse of the USSR put an end to these plans, although the first branch was built and even launched in the South Caucasus.

In the 2000s, the Kremlin decided not to trifle with bilateral cooperation and adopted the idea of creating a "gas OPEC" - an organization that would help the gas-exporting countries defend their interests in the same way as the oil-exporting countries do. But despite the high-profile events, there were no results.

Nothing has changed recently. Right, at the end of May, during the visit of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak to Tehran, according to official reports, "energy was discussed first of all." Official Russian media hinted that a strategic agreement had been reached - in exchange for Moscow's financing of infrastructure projects in Iran, Tehran would refuse to increase oil supplies to international markets. In June, Russian officials began talking about preparing documents to create an "oil and gas hub." However, it turns out that through this hub, Russian energy resources would only go to the north of Iran, and Iranian ones would instead be exported to the Asia-Pacific region. However, talks have also resumed about Lukoil's participation in two oil fields in southern Iran and about possible deliveries of Russian gas through Azerbaijan for export through Iranian ports.

Real ties only with Türkiye

If anyone can turn the Tehran meeting into a truly productive summit, it is rather Erdogan. He has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to reshape international politics over the past couple of decades. Particularly under him, the Turkish government, one of the few, has successfully defended its sovereignty even within the rigid organizations, built by the West, like NATO. Famous Russian political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov, speaking about the policy of the current Turkish government, notes that "the highly diversified system of relations is an achievement of the current government." Erdogan realized before many others the dialectic of the new times: rigid alliances limit opportunities more than they give, but the lack of institutional connection with key partners is fraught with growing conflicts. It is ideal to be in a stable system of relationships that forces others to moderate their fervor with an ally but to retain as much leeway and ability to vary behavior with circumstances within it as possible.

In fact, the current Turkish leadership's more pragmatic approach to foreign policy has already enabled it to achieve impressive results in its relations with both Moscow and Tehran. Türkiye's trade volumes with these countries are many times greater than those with Russia and Iran.

Turks do not intend to sacrifice them for the sake of even the global hegemon. A couple of weeks ago Ibrahim Kalın, a spokesman for the Turkish president, clearly said that if sanctions against Russia do more harm to the Turkish economy than to Russia, Ankara will not impose them. Moreover, according to Kalın, Turkey depends on foreign energy sources and therefore "develops relations with Russia just as it does with Iran."

Indeed, even if we consider the oil and gas sector, strategically important for Moscow, the interaction between Russia and Türkiye is much more effective than with Iran. Using the capacities of the Blue Stream and Turkish Stream pipelines built in the last two decades Russia supplies 45 percent of the gas needed by Türkiye. Through the Turkish Stream, Russian gas also reached the countries of Southeast Europe. Moreover, all Russian hopes of launching the Southern Gas Transmission Corridor via Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye in the direction of Southern Europe are now also dependent on Erdogan. And for balance, as it became known on Wednesday, Turkish oil and gas company Botas received a $929 million loan from Germany's Deutsche Bank to buy LNG in order to reduce Türkiye's dependence on Russian gas.

Similar trends can be seen in other areas. Türkiye supports Ukraine in every way but does not intend, for example, to refuse Russian tourists, and therefore it has already announced the creation of a special charter company for them, several Turkish banks have announced their readiness to accept the card of the payment system "Mir". And in international politics, Erdogan is important to Russia as an intermediary in contact with both the West and Ukraine. Once again this became clear in the example of the problem of the export of more than 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain and the creation of corridors for food exports in the future.

In a word, the forthcoming trilateral summit in Teheran is overloaded with problems. And it's certainly not a meeting to create some kind of anti-Western bloc. Not because there are no interested persons, there are plenty, as is evident from the relevant comments in the media and political statements. But there is no material basis for such an anti-Western project. The only member country that has achieved close relations with the other two states is Türkiye. And Türkiye is insistent on avoiding dogmatism, both anti-Western and anti-Russian. Ankara remembers very well how the Turks ended up in World War I and can compare the devastating results of World War I and the much better outcome for Türkiye of World War II. In which Türkiye wisely chose not to participate. Not surprisingly, even now Ankara is in no hurry to get involved in global conflicts.

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