Vladimir Putin is visiting Iran for the fifth time. Is it a sufficient amount of times?
If you count from 2000, when he headed Russia, then it seems to be a small amount of times. But if you look at the dates of visits, you get a completely different picture. It turns out that the current trip is the fourth in the last seven years.
Yes, Putin first came to Tehran in 2007, but regular trips began only in 2015. At the same time, all Putin’s visits are of a working nature, that is, he has never paid an official visit to the Islamic Republic. Each time his visit was associated with some kind of multilateral event that took place in the Iranian capital: the Caspian Forum, the summit of gas exporting countries. Or, as this time, with a meeting in the “Astana format”, that is, a trilateral summit Russia-Turkey- Iran. This “Big Three” emerged five years ago in connection with the search for ways to resolve the conflict in Syria, but has long outgrown the purely Syrian problem. Because all three countries are among the truly sovereign states – and they have something to discuss among themselves.
Moreover, if the weight of Turkey in both regional and world affairs is understood quite well (both supporters and opponents of strengthening bilateral relations), then the role of Iran has been underestimated in Russia for many years. More precisely, they were evaluated absolutely incorrectly. The reason is simple: Russian Western-oriented expert community looked at Russia’s great neighbor mainly through Western glasses: a pariah country, mullahs with missiles and a desire to get an atomic bomb, a theocracy, a repressive regime, a threat to the security of the Middle East and the whole world, Islamic fanatics, etc. Well, in general, some kind of eastern hole, incomparable with the advanced, enlightened and rich West.
No, the political leadership looked at Iran with different eyes, but what did our people know about the Islamic Republic? At worst, a retelling of Western propaganda, and at best, some echoes of the Movie Travelers Club. Even our turn to the East after 2014 did not change the perception of our southern neighbor: the real Iran is still very poorly known in Russia.
However, now we are moving towards the conclusion of an agreement on comprehensive strategic cooperation for 20 or 25 years. It could be signed as early as this year: in January, new President Ebrahim Raisi handed over an Iranian draft treaty to Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and last month Sergei Lavrov brought his Russian version to Tehran. Russia and Iran will not become military allies (although military-technical cooperation is increasingly complemented by joint exercises), but their relations are in for a very serious development.
Moreover, Iran is becoming more and more actively involved in the multilateral format of cooperation with Russia – it has already entered the SCO (the entry procedure will be completed in the fall), and wants to join the BRICS. That is, we are talking about a full-fledged course towards strategic cooperation between the two countries both in a bilateral format and on the world stage. Russia and Iran have a huge potential for interaction – from trade to the North-South transport corridor connecting the Baltic with Iranian ports in the Arabian Sea, that is, Europe with India through the Caspian Sea. No need to think that because of the conflict between Russia and Europe, it has lost its relevance – the potential for trade between the North and the South is still huge. Even if the war of sanctions between Russia and Europe lasts for a long time, the corridor will be needed for Russia’s trade with the countries of the Middle East and Asia.
And most importantly, rapprochement with Iran is in Russia’s strategic interests. Because we are dealing not just with the heir of great civilizations, with an 86 million neighbor, but also with one of the most spiritually strong countries in the world.
Iran is a truly sovereign country, going its own way, looking for its own forms of organization of the state and society, upholding national interests and not bowing to any external pressure. This is exactly what Russia is doing, but also what we have yet to do. And the point here is not even in the Iranian experience of life and development under many decades of Western sanctions – it will also come in handy, although the former world itself, in which the West could significantly slow down countries that it does not like (and threaten them with destruction), is becoming a thing of the past. Much more important is the fact that Iran has managed to find its own formula of state structure and social relations, a formula that expresses precisely its national traits and aspirations.
The Islamic Republic is not a tracing-paper from foreign samples, Western or Eastern – it is a unique Iranian invention. Complex, based both on traditions (religious and national), and on the idea of the correct form of popular representation and the application of Islamic law. With its own problems, mistakes and lessons, but survived in the most difficult external conditions. None of the great powers – and Iran is undoubtedly one of them – has demonstrated in recent decades nothing like such creativity in the field of building a new type of state. The last to have a similar (and even superior) experience was the Soviet Union.
And now Russia is again facing a huge challenge – it needs to come up with a new form of being for its people and its state. Not in order to withstand the confrontation with the West, but because they themselves have long needed it. The Iranian experience is not directly applicable to Russia, but the Iranian desire to search for an ideal social order is close to Russians, as is the dream that the state should guard justice, embody and protect people’s ideals, that honest, strong-willed people who feel their responsibility to people and God people.
And therefore, the fifth meeting of Putin with Rahbar Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is not just a conversation between two very influential and very experienced statesmen, it is also a meeting of two people who have something to talk about, in addition to global problems and challenges. Because if two countries like Russia and Iran follow their own spiritual and national path, it means that they will go together. And each will become stronger — no longer simply responding to the challenges from the West, but together building a new world in which traditionalist peoples will be able to live according to their way of life and their own laws.
Petr Akopov, RIA
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