Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a broad cooperation agreement Friday, deepening their already growing partnership.
The agreement, which Pezeshkian called a “solid foundation,” covers a wide range of subjects including “culture, economy, and humanitarian relations; will provide a great boost to the development of bilateral relations; and serve as a solid foundation for further progress,” he said.
Russia and Iran’s ties have grown in the years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In that time, Tehran has provided Moscow with hundreds of one-way attack drones, worked with it to build a factory to produce them inside Russia, and has given it close-range ballistic missiles as well, according to the Biden administration.
Officials have warned over the course of the conflict that Moscow has been strengthening its partnerships with other anti-Western countries, including North Korea and China.
“We are unanimous in our intention not to stop where we are now and to take relations to a qualitatively new level,” Putin said. “This is the meaning of the signed interstate agreement on comprehensive strategic partnership. It sets ambitious tasks and benchmarks for deeper bilateral cooperation in the long term in politics, security, trade, investment and humanitarian areas.
“This truly breakthrough document is aimed at creating the necessary conditions for the stable and sustainable development of Russia and Iran and our entire Eurasian region,” he continued.
In May 2023, National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby described Russia and Iran’s partnership as a “full-scale defense partnership.”
The Pezeshkian-Putin meeting, their third since the former came to power last summer, comes less than a week before President-elect Donald Trump gets sworn into the Oval Office for his second, albeit nonconsecutive, term. Since Trump left office, Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which occurred in February 2022, and Iran and its proxies are much weaker following 15 months of sustained fighting against Israel.
Trump has pledged to end the Russia-Ukraine war and is expected to restart a maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.
There have been multiple Iranian plots to assassinate Trump, which have led to the arrests of multiple suspects, following his decision to approve the January 2020 airstrike that targeted and killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Pezeshkian denied the allegations that Tehran wanted to kill the incoming president.
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“This is another one of those schemes that Israel and other countries are designing to promote Iranophobia. … Iran has never attempted to nor does it plan to assassinate anyone, at least as far as I know,” Pezeshkian told NBC’s Lester Holt earlier this week.
The two countries’ ties go back a couple of decades and include joining forces in Syria about a decade ago to prop up Bashar Assad’s dictatorship during the country’s civil war. His regime fell in December 2024 after about five decades in part because neither Tehran nor Moscow had the available forces to send assistance as various opposition factions swiftly overthrew him.