

by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
There was a time when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was President of Iran (1989-97) and he despatched from his personal office secret intelligence-gatherers to Moscow. That was during the Yeltsin administration, when there was no love lost for Iran inside the Kremlin wall. So Rafsanjani’s advisors came under cover of merchants selling the pistachios of which Iran is the world’s largest and best producer.
I remember meeting them at the old Peking Hotel. They were good listeners; I don’t recall their saying anything except to ask questions. To our meetings they brought presentation boxes of finely roasted pistachios.
From Rafsanjani’s men in those days I learned that the best way of understanding what Iranians are thinking about the Kremlin is not to ask questions, which they invariably evade and obfuscate in answer. It’s in the questions they ask that the clues will be found to Iran’s objectives, priorities, and also their uncertainties, vulnerabilities.
At the conclusion of the new President of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian’s meetings with President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Friday, there was a brief, carefully staged exchange of questions and answers between the presidents and the press — two Iranian questions, two Russian ones. Just twenty minutes were allowed.
The Iranian questions started from the obvious fact that both Iran and Russia are presently defending themselves from the long US war to destroy them both — through Israel for Iran, through the Ukraine for Russia. The Iran reporters asked two questions making the same point about the present war: “What will happen in the future with the current agreement?” “What will be the policy of the two countries regarding the international agenda, as well as regional cooperation, especially in our region? How can all this be translated into practice?”
President Putin avoided speaking of the war; the Russian reporters followed suit. Interfax asked about the gas business; Izvestia sidestepped with a fatuity: “With such constant turbulence in the same Middle East, how can the balance of power be maintained?”
Pezeshkian was more explicit than Putin. “You see in what is taking place in Lebanon, in Syria, in Gaza Strip, that the bloodshed is endless. You all have seen this with your own eyes…These double standards are intolerable to us… today’s agreements…ensure that the unipolar world will no longer dictate our course. No double standards can govern the world.”
“When discussing recent developments in Syria,” Putin said, “we emphasised that Russia remains committed to comprehensive settlement in that country based on respect for its sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity. We stand ready to continue providing the Syrian people with the necessary support for stabilising the situation, to offer urgent humanitarian aid, and to start full-scale post-conflict reconstruction…we sincerely wish that the Syrian people will successfully overcome all the emerging challenges posed by the current transition period.”
More concrete answers are to be found in the forty-seven articles of the pact which the two presidents had just signed. Titled the “Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation”, three originals were signed – in Russian, Persian, and English. Exceptionally, on its last line the pact declares “that all texts [are] equally authentic,“ but that “in case of any disagreement in interpretation or implementation of this Treaty, the English text shall be used.”
No historical precedent can be found in which two allied states have agreed with each other to apply in this way the language of their common enemy.
In the English version of the new treaty it is also evident how the Russians and Iranians have left out what they failed to agree to say or do towards that enemy. Read carefully, just six weeks after the two presidents did not agree on military cooperation to stop the Turkish, Israeli and American invasions of Syria and its partition, this looks to one military observer as “a declaration of maybe — we promise to be nice to each other, when possible, perhaps.”
For the record of Putin’s disagreements with President Ebrahim Raisi, Pezeshkian’s predecessor, on Israel’s war against the Palestinians and attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, read this report and then this one.
Here is the text of the new agreement in full and in English from the Iranian government. The Kremlin publication of the text in Russian can be read here.

Source: https://irangov.ir/detail/456479
The terms “war”, “armed invasion”, and “attack” are not mentioned. This is in contrast to Articles 3 and 4 of the Russia-Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” which was signed by Putin with Chairman Kim Jon Un in Pyongyang on June 19, last year.
In the Korean-Russian pact, Article 3 provides that “in case a direct threat of armed invasion is created [. . .], the two sides shall immediately operate the channel of bilateral negotiations for the purpose of adjusting their [stances . . .] and discussing feasible practical measures.” Article 4 of the Korean-Russian pact is more explicit: “in case any one of the two sides is put in a state of war by an armed invasion [. . .], the other side shall provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay.”

Left, President Putin and President Raisi in Moscow on December 23, 2023. Right: Putin and President Pezeshkian in Moscow on January 17, 2025.

Putin with DPRK President Kim Jong Un at their treaty signing in Pyongyang, June 19, 2024.
The operative military provisions of the new Iran pact are in Article 4. “In order to enhance national security and confront common threats, the intelligence and security agencies of the Contracting Parties shall exchange information and experience and increase the level of their cooperation. 2. The intelligence and security agencies of the Contracting Parties shall cooperate within the framework of separate agreements.”
The terms “cooperate” and “cooperation” appear 71 times in the treaty text; this is the dominant concept of the agreement. “Information” comes next with 23 mentions; “security” third at 21; “military” at 12. “Trade” and “economic ties” trail far behind. The vagueness of the cooperation trope is the reason the Iranian reporters asked at the Kremlin press conference what it means in practical terms.
Putin’s response avoided security, defence, warfighting. Instead, he repeated what the pact says for “extra conditions, basic additional conditions, to promote trade and economic ties. To put it in plain terms, we need less red tape and more concrete action.”
Pezeshkian added the war sensitivity: “This, of course, aligns with our shared policy of ensuring regional security and opposing the unipolar world. We are confident that, in our region, we can cooperate without external influences or involvement from outlying players.”
Article 3(3) of the treaty provides an unusual disclaimer. “In the event that either Contracting Party is subject to aggression, the other Contracting Party shall not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor which would contribute to the continued aggression, and shall help to ensure that the differences that have arisen are settled on the basis of the United Nations Charter and other applicable rules of international law.”
The Iranians believe that Russian policy in Syria not to operate its air defence systems against Israeli air attacks nor to protect Syrian territory, the Syrian armed forces, and Iranian commanders, units, and military equipment in Syria from Israeli bombing and missiles has been tacit Russian encouragement to the Israelis to attack, and thus a violation of the provision which has just been signed. In recent remarks by Brigadier General Behrouz Esbati (right) of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) he says so explicitly.
A NATO veteran source comments: “I suppose the Iranians and Russians would prefer if no one pointed out that not helping an aggressor targeting one or the other signals that aggressors need not worry about either coming to the other’s aid.”
Article 4 and 5 appear to expand the operations of the general staffs and intelligence services of Russia and Iran. For example, Article 4 provides that “1. In order to enhance national security and confront common threats, the intelligence and security agencies of the Contracting Parties shall exchange information and experience and increase the level of their cooperation. 2. The intelligence and security agencies of the Contracting Parties shall cooperate within the framework of separate agreements.”
The vagueness and ambiguity of the term, “level of cooperation”, may be resolved by the “framework of separate agreements”, but that clearly means the two sides are keeping their arrangements secret.
Article 5 displays a similar combination of outer ambiguity and inner secrecy. Article 5(4) looks to be expansive but it is vague: “The Contracting Parties shall consult and cooperate in countering common military and security threats of a bilateral and regional nature.” This should extend, for example, to providing target intelligence to the Houthi forces of Yemen against Israel and Israeli-bound or Israeli-connected shipping in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea. Article 5(1) provides the secrecy qualifier: “In order to develop military cooperation between their relevant agencies, the Contracting Parties shall conduct the preparation and implementation of respective agreements within the Working Group on Military Cooperation.”
Putin was more comfortable using fight language to agree with Pezeshkian on combating the US-led sanctions war against them both. Identical language has been used in the new treaty as was used in the Korean one of last June. Sanctions, termed “unilateral coercive measures”, are dealt with in Article 19 of the new agreement. The two states have explicitly agreed to fight back together. Using the emphatic form of the future tense, they “shall counter the application of unilateral coercive measures”; “shall guarantee the non-application of unilateral coercive measures aimed directly or indirectly against either Contracting Party”; and “shall refrain from acceding to unilateral coercive measures or supporting such measures of any third party, if such measures affect or are aimed directly or indirectly against either Contracting Party, individuals and legal entities of such Contracting Party or their property.”
To fight the sanctions war, Russia and Iran have also agreed that they “shall make practical efforts to reduce risks, eliminate or mitigate the direct and indirect impact of such measures on mutual economic ties, individuals and legal entities of the Contracting Parties or their property under the jurisdiction of the Contracting Parties, goods originating from one Contracting Party and intended for the other Contracting Party, and/or works, services, information.”
This is not new. In December 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signed with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, then the Iranian Foreign Minister, what they called “a declaration on the ways and tools of countering, alleviating and compensating for the negative consequences of unilateral coercive measures. This is important for pooling the efforts of the international community to overcome the illegal sanctions with which the US and its allies have replaced diplomacy.”

Moscow meeting on sanctions warfighting between Amir-Abdollahian (left) and Lavrov (right), December 5, 2023.
Regarding Iran’s vulnerability to Israeli nuclear armed attack, and the counter-measures these draw from Teheran, in the new treaty there is a passing reference to more “cooperation” in Article 10 which says: “The Contracting Parties shall cooperate closely on arms control, disarmament, non-proliferation, and international security issues within the framework of the relevant international treaties and international organizations to which they are parties, and hold consultations regularly on these matters.”
The text of the pact provides for other agreements to be negotiated. For defence and military purposes, for example, Article 41 provides that “the Contracting Parties, in order to define specific areas and parameters of cooperation provided for in this Treaty, may, if necessary, conclude separate agreements.” These may remain secret.
For those who savour Iranian pistachios, this treaty language is marking out the difference between the shell and the nut. About that, in the only Russian comment published so far by Boris Rozhin, a leading military analyst in Moscow, the shell is acknowledged and the secret crux is an irony. “The secret protocols on the new partition of Poland were not published,” Rozhin has commented.
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