RUSSIA-IRAN

Source: indianexpress

Context:

In his first trip outside the former Soviet sphere since the Ukraine war began, Russian President Vladamir Putin visited Tehran where he held talks with both Iranian and Turkish leaders.

RUSSIA’S LOOK EAST POLICY

Russia's invasion of Ukraine may have isolated Moscow in the west.
But crisis seems to have opened new avenues of cooperation between Iran and Russia.
After the invasion, Russia came under heavy western sanctions, which forced President Putin to look east.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

In Syria, Tehran and Moscow helped President Bashar al-Asad turn around the civil war to his favour.
In recent years, especially after the U.S unilaterally pulled itself out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Tehran sought to accelerate its cooperation with both Russia and China; in what German-Iranian political scientist Ali Fathollah Nejad called a look –to- the East geopolitical orientation.
In March 2021, Iran signed a 25-year’ comprehensive strategic partnership agreement’ with China. In 2001, Russia and Iran had signed a 10-year cooperation treaty, and last year, Iran said it was in an advanced stage of discussions to clinch a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Russia. These agreements lack transparency but show Iran’s desire to have stronger ties with its Eurasian partners, in sharp contrast with the earlier bid to bet on the nuclear deal and removal of the sanctions.
The Iran –Russia ties despite their common foes have also remained a complex affair The partnership has been characterized by both cooperation and competition (especially in the field of oil exports).

ENERGY DEAL

Russia’s Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a memorandum of understanding worth a dollar of 40 billion. The deal involves joint offshore gas projects, gas and oil products swap, completion of LNG projects, and building gas pipelines.

IRAN SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANISATION MEMBERSHIP

Earlier, the Russia and China–backed Shanghai Cooperation Organization had announced that Iran would be given full membership soon

BLACK SEA IMPORTANCE TO RUSSIA

Moscow sees the Black Sea region as vital to its geo-economic strategy: to project Russian power and influence in the Mediterranean, protect its economic and trade links with key European markets, and make southern Europe more dependent on Russian oil and gas.

Keenly aware of the potential for instability to flow from the Middle East into Russia particularly the North and South Caucasus Russia also sees this body of water as an important security buffer zone, protecting it from the volatility that could emanate from further south.

Moscow depends on the Black Sea for access to the Mediterranean and beyond, both for military operations outside its immediate neighbourhood and for exports of Russia’s main commodity (hydrocarbons). Moscow sees the Mediterranean as largely NATO-dominated, but it hopes to spot opportunities to make political, economic, and military inroads with key regional states, as it has done in Syria.

WHY HAS RUSSIA BECOME MORE AGGRESSIVE IN THE BLACK SEA REGION?

Moscow believes that threats from the Black Sea region have grown in recent years and are more than just regional hazards.
The Black Sea’s proximity to the Russian heartland means that a considerable part of European Russia could be within the range of U.S. sea- and land-based intermediate-range missiles.
Russian officials have complained that the deployment of the NATO missile defence system in Romania represents the encroachment of U.S. strategic infrastructure in Russia’s neighbourhood and is intended to undermine Russian security.
Russia views the Crimean peninsula as a springboard to project power into the wider Mediterranean region.
Moscow’s plans to rebuild influence in the region had atrophied after the Cold War, as had Crimea’s prominence in Russia’s mission to deter and defend against the United States and NATO in the event of an East-West conflict.
Russia has since used its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its subsequent buildup of naval, ground, and air defence capabilities to remedy that weakness.
Kremlin’s aggressive reaction to U.S. naval and air patrols in and over the Black Sea highlights continued Russian perceptions of vulnerability there.

HOW IS MOSCOW TRYING TO INFLUENCE BROADER BLACK SEA AFFAIRS?

Russia has obvious disadvantages in the Black Sea, due to a combination of geography and politics that limit its access to the wider Mediterranean region. Although Crimea and the southern Russian port city of Novorossiysk provide the Russian navy and tankers with access to warm water ports, all ships entering or leaving the Black Sea must pass through the Turkish-controlled straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, two strategically important passageways between the Black and Mediterranean Seas.

Ankara’s control over the Bosporus and Dardanelles was confirmed in the 1936 Montreaux Convention. Under the agreement, Turkey allows civilian ships to pass through the straits in peacetime and places some restrictions on military vessels not belonging to Black Sea littoral states. Russia has long been concerned about Turkey’s ability to use the straits as a chokehold during a conflict.

HOW DOES ECONOMICS PLAY INTO RUSSIA’S APPROACH TO THE BLACK SEA?

Russia also has important economic assets in the Black Sea region, which it wants to protect.
The Black Sea is an important trade and transportation artery for Russia.
Both Russia and Central Asian countries are highly dependent on the Russian port of Novorossiysk to export grain and oil by ship; this provides Moscow with useful leverage over land-locked Central Asia.
Meanwhile, Russia is investing in new infrastructure to protect its Black Sea trade corridor and to create more alternative routes to skirt Ukraine.
A series of oil and gas pipelines through Turkey, including the newly launched TurkStream pipeline, will buttress Russian-Turkish ties, improve Russia’s leverage with Turkey, and provide Moscow with new export routes bypassing Ukraine.
Russia’s expanding energy ties in the Balkans, especially in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Serbia, have positioned the Kremlin to use energy as a geopolitical weapon and to undercut NATO and EU influence in the fragile region.
These pipelines serve more than just one function: they generate revenue and act as geopolitical tools in Moscow’s offence and defence of its interests in the wider Black Sea region and on Europe’s southern flank.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE FOR RUSSIA IN THE BLACK SEA?

Europe’s push toward a zero carbon target by 2050 and an increasingly competitive gas market for both liquefied natural gas and Azerbaijani pipeline gas will undercut Russia’s economic leverage.
Moscow may have stopped Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO, but in doing so, it has turned both countries into permanent enemies, whose presence on the Russian border and growing ties with NATO will require Russia to maintain significant military assets.
The Russian-Turkish rapprochement may be the most remarkable shift in Black Sea regional dynamics over the past decade. Yet Turkey remains an unreliable partner for Moscow, with a long tradition of adversarial relations with Russia.
Ankara wants to expand its influence in what Russia sees as its privileged sphere—as most vividly seen in Turkish military support to Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Turkey also continues to vocally support Ukraine’s territorial integrity, including over Crimea, and to sell arms to Ukraine.

Finally, NATO increasingly accepts Russia as its prime adversary. This has reinforced calls for a more robust Western strategy toward Russia, particularly in the Black Sea and southeastern Europe. Facing these challenges, however, Russia is unlikely to back down and will defend its position fiercely.

FACTS ABOUT THE BLACK SEA

The Black Sea, also known as the Euxine Sea, is one of the major water bodies and a famous inland sea in the world.
This marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, is located between Eastern Europe and Western Asia.
It is surrounded by the Pontic, Caucasus, and Crimean Mountains in the south, east and north respectively.
The Turkish straits system - the Dardanelles, Bosporus and Marmara Sea - forms a transitional zone between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea
River flows in the Black sea- Danube, Dnieper and Don via the Sea of AzovRioni, Kodori and Inguri Chorokh, Kyzyl-Irmak, Eshel-Irmak, Sakarya, Southern Bug and Dnister

The Black Sea is also connected to the Sea of Azov by the Strait of Kerch.

The bordering countries of the Black Sea are Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania.

On April 21, 1992, acting on the mandate of all Back Sea countries (Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine), the Convention on the Protection of the Black Sea Against Pollution was signed in Bucharest
It is a saltwater sea but its salinity is not as high as ocean water. It is believed that thousands of years ago the water was freshwater but later due to the Mediterranean Sea and floods, the water turned salty

Anoxic Water:

There is a significant absence of oxygen in the water

The Black Sea happens to be the largest water body with a meromictic basin, which means the movement of water between the lower and upper layers of the sea is a rare phenomenon to find anywhere in the world.

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