Military cooperation between Iran and Russia has gyrated from virtually nothing after the 1979 revolution to a strategic partnership, bolstered by important arms transfers, by 2023. Overall, Moscow accounted for about a third of Tehran’s arms imports during the four decades after the revolution, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). And the Islamic Republic was exporting Iranian arms to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

On March 10, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties seven years after severing relations. The regional rivals committed to reopening embassies in Tehran and Riyadh by May 2023. The deal, brokered by China, also included the implementation of a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001 and a 1998 pact to enhance cooperation on trade, investment, technology, and culture.

For decades, the United States has considered the Islamic Republic to be among the greatest threats to its interests and allies in the Middle East. Successive presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have cited Iran’s nuclear program, support for terrorism, meddling in the Middle East and imprisoning American citizens on trumped up charges. Since the 1980s, U.S. forces deployed in Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria as well as Afghanistan have come under attack by Iran’s surrogates and allies.

Kelsey Davenport is the Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association.
 

Is restoring the nuclear deal with Iran—brokered in 2015 and abandoned by the United States in 2018—still possible after almost two years of stalled diplomacy?

From a technical perspective, restoring the agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is possible. Politically, however, it will be challenging.  

Iran has developed a robust drone industry after decades of importing defense equipment for domestic use by both security and military forces. By the fall of 2022, Tehran had also exported drones or drone technology to at least five countries on four continents as well as to at least seven proxy militias in the Middle East.

Henry Rome is the deputy head of research at Eurasia Group.

Iran reported its first deaths from the new COVID-19 virus on February 19, 2020. It soon became one of the world’s early epicenters. The Health Ministry claimed that the disease had been spread by travelers between Iran’s holy city of Qom and China’s industrial center at Wuhan, where the coronavirus first broke out. The government initially rejected quarantines, which the Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said "belong to pre-WWI — to the plague, cholera, stuff like that."

On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist, was assassinated in a roadside attack about 40 miles east of Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program. He was often compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb. He kept a low profile for most of his career.

Iran has become increasingly reliant on China to survive existential crises, including diplomatic isolation, regional tensions and a rocky economy. In March 2023, China—Iran’s largest trade partner—brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic ties seven years after severing relations.

Tensions between Iran and the outside world have escalated since an attack on four tankers on May 12 near the Strait of Hormuz, which was followed by an attack on two more tankers on June 13. Both attacks occurred in the Gulf of Oman. The Persian Gulf flows through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman. On July 4, the British Royal Navy seized an Iranian tanker carrying oil to Syria. In what seemed like a response, Iranian vessels harassed a British tanker while entering the Strait of Hormuz on July 11.