In typical he-man style, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, ignored an alleged assassination plot and went ahead with a visit to Tehran this week.
Iran says the plot story was propaganda fabricated by its enemies, which may well be true. Historically speaking, Russians need no outside help doing away with their leaders. They manage perfectly well by themselves.
It is also true though that, over the centuries, Persian-Russian relations have been spattered with the blood of eminent men. During the Napoleonic wars, Iran turned to France, and then Britain, for help in fending off imperial Russia. But it was let down by both and in 1813, the Treaty of Golestan effectively confirmed Russia’s seizure of its Caucasus territories. Moscow’s problems in Muslim Chechnya and Dagestan date from that period.
In 1826 the two countries went to war again, with Britain once more refusing to assist Iran. This unequal contest ended two years later with the humiliating Treaty of Turkmenchai. Iran was forced to cede further territory and pay 20-million roubles in reparations — a crippling sum.
According to Ali Ansari in his recent book, Confronting Iran, Iran’s betrayal and domination by the great powers of that time helps to explain its present-day distrust of their successors. Russian bullying continued into the modern era. In 1945, when the United States and Britain agreed to end their wartime occupation of Iran, the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its troops. Joseph Stalin sought instead to partition the country — until US pressure dissuaded him. Even the 1979-1981 siege of the US embassy in Tehran, following the Islamic revolution and the shah’s overthrow, finds an echo in 19th-century Persian-Russian relations. After the Russian ambassador, Alexander Griboedov, gave sanctuary to the chief eunuch of the shah’s harem (a valued spy) and two runaway Georgian concubines, an outraged mob surrounded his embassy. When guards fired on them, the crowd stormed the building. Griboedov and most of his staff were killed and mutilated.
Speaking on Iranian television, Iran’s current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, assured Putin of a more friendly welcome to Tehran this time around — and diplomatically glossed over this long history of affronts. ”Relations between Iran and Russia have been influenced by outside forces at times, but today both countries are determined to expand their ties to the highest level,” he said.
There was ”natural unity” between the two, exemplified by their cooperation in building Iran’s nuclear plant at Bushehr and their refusal to do the bidding of the Western powers, Mr Ahmadinejad added. What was also plain, although not stated, was the Iranian leader’s gratification at the visit blowing a large hole in US-led attempts to isolate Tehran.
Putin’s approach to Iran, underpinned as ever by Russia’s greater strength, is more canny. He insisted recently that there was no evidence that Iran was developing an atomic weapon. He has cast himself as an ”honest broker” in the nuclear dispute with the US, and gave another warning on October 16 of the unacceptability of military action. He knows his Tehran sojourn again demonstrates Russia’s reviving central role in global affairs.
All the same, Putin is hardly falling over himself to help Iran become a nuclear-armed state, if that is what Tehran is trying to do. Completion of the Bushehr project has been repeatedly put back. Nuclear fuel deliveries from Russia have been withheld. Moscow has infuriated Tehran by claiming not to have been paid.
In short, Russia is playing both sides off against the middle, using tensions with the West to advance its own national interest. Putin’s pragmatism should not be mistaken for friendship. After all, Russia’s power games in Iran are hardly new. Just look at the history. — Â