BOOK REVIEW Russia and Iran: Comrades in contradiction Persian Dreams by John W Parker
Reviewed by Ian Chesley
It is sometimes difficult to remember that, not so long ago, Iran’s best
diplomatic friend in the world was the United States. A revolution in 1979 and
long hostage standoff ended that. During most of the 1980s, Iran was occupied
with its war against Iraq, but by 1988 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had realized
the country needed partnerships with the world’s powers if the Islamic
revolution were to survive. One of the first attempts to re-engage
the world diplomatically was a cordial letter from Khomeini to the Soviet
premier Mikhail Gorbachev.
This excellent new book, Persian Dreams, offers an exhaustive detailing of the
Iran-Russia relationship which ensued - so much so that it will certainly be
the definitive history of the subject until the Iranian side becomes more
accessible. Its author John W Parker, chief of the Division for Caucasus and
Central Asia in the US State Department’s intelligence bureau, also wrote a
monumental two-volume study of Moscow-Tehran politics in the 1980s, which gives
a remarkably even-handed treatment to the interplay between these two nations,
both of which have less than agreeable diplomatic histories with the US. The
recently released Persian Dreams deals with Moscow-Tehran politics from the 80s
to today.
Parker's research includes extensive on-the-record interviews with Russian
politicians and experts on Iran, and it seems clear that he has done some
background interviews with Iranian figures (although he does not name or cite
them). Because both Iran and Russia are, on their own, two extremely complex
countries, untangling their relationship over the past thirty years is
exponentially more difficult than considering them in isolation.
Making the task even more labyrinthine is the fact that for many of those
years, Iran was actively working against the Russia’s interests (or vice-versa)
in one area, while in another area they worked together harmoniously. One
example of this is the nexus of civil wars in Tajikistan and Afghanistan in the
early 1990s. Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet states, dissolved
into chaos in 1992. Russia backed the establishment communists for the sake of
stability, while Iran entered the fray by supporting the opposition, which it
mistook to be an Islamic revolutionary movement.
At the same time, Russia and Iran saw their interests coincide in Afghanistan,
where both considered the ethnic Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud as a bulwark against
the Islamic extremism and Pakistani influence of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another
warlord. To make matters even more complicated, both Hekmatyar and Massoud gave
support to the opposition in Tajikistan.
Parker also shows how the two countries also delicately managed their energy
policies in relation to one another. Throughout the 1990s, the Russian
government viewed the Iranian market for nuclear power plants as a crucial
element in keeping its own national nuclear industry afloat and as an important
source of hard currency. The Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy, or Minatom,
signed a contract in 1995 to build a nuclear plant at Bushehr in southern Iran.
Meanwhile, Iran and Russia were quietly locked in a struggle to delineate
oil-drilling rights in the Caspian. At one point in 2001, Iran actually sent
gunboats and planes to scare off a joint project between Azerbaijan and British
Petroleum, attempting to make a de facto claim on the sea over which Russia and
other littoral states were simultaneously signing agreements.
In the new millennium Iran and Russia adjusted to the new American presence in
the Middle East and Central Asia. For a few years, both countries turned away
from each other and towards the US. In Afghanistan, neither put up any
obstacles to scattering their old foes, the Taliban. Then in 2003 the US
invaded Iraq, and although Iran approved of former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein’s ouster, the large American presence in another bordering country was
too threatening to accept. Russia found itself at odds with America over oil
contracts in Iraq, regretted its loss of prestige in the United Nations
Security Council, and began to drift back towards Iran.
The conclusion one draws from all this is that Iran and Russia have had decades
of practice at balancing interests and acting pragmatically on the most
important issues. What George W Bush-era Americans might perceive as hopeless
confusion and self-contradiction, in fact represents a very calculating form of
realism, exercised with patience and flexibility, even if perfect consistency
was rarely achieved.
Any informed approach to either of these countries has to take into account the
way one has played the other off the West, all while managing to take what
benefits it can extract from the relationship. There is no better book than Persian
Dreams to start studying these strategies.
Persian Dreams also provides the essential context to understand this
year’s most surprising events in Eurasia. The entry of Russian armed forces
onto the territory of the small, Western-oriented nation of Georgia in the
summer of 2008 caused a fundamental shift in the way foreign policy experts
looked at the post-Soviet space.
Many of them instinctively reverted to the polarities of the old Cold-War
paradigm and saw Russia threatening an ideological ally of the United States.
More important for the long term, though, the projection of Russian strength
into the Caucasus sent an implicit message to Iran about who the real power is
in the region.
Iran has long considered post-Soviet Azerbaijan, a neighbor of Georgia, an
illegitimate younger sibling of its own Azerbaijan province, whereas Russia has
made clear that it, along with the rest of the former Soviet states, still
belongs to the Russian "near abroad".
The other major news of 2008 was the announcement by the International Atomic
Energy Commission in November that Iran had successfully produced about 630
kilograms of low-enriched uranium. Many nuclear experts view that quantity as
sufficient, or nearly so, to begin the process of enriching uranium to much
higher levels of purity, making it useful not only for power generation but for
building a nuclear weapon as well. Having achieved this benchmark faster than
expected, Iran has a valuable bargaining chip to use against any potential
diplomatic suitors.
Whether US president-elect Barack Obama manages to engage Iran diplomatically,
as he promised to do during the presidential campaign, very much remains to be
seen. Parker repeatedly points out that one reason Russia has tended to hold
back in its dealings with Iran is the fear that Iran and the US are destined,
eventually, to return to being the strategic partners they once were in the
twentieth century.
In that case, all of Russia’s efforts will have been for naught. Indeed, it may
well turn out to be that Iran’s strategy of pursuing nuclear capabilities will
ultimately enable it to turn its back on Russia and re-establish a relationship
with the West.
Persian Dreams: Moscow and Tehran Since the Fall of the Shah by John W
Parker. Potomac Books, November 2008. ISBN-10: 1597972363. Price US$34.95, 438
pages.
Ian Chesley studied and taught Persian at Harvard University, and was
awarded a doctorate in Russian literature in 2007.
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Parker's research includes extensive on-the-record interviews with Russian
politicians and experts on Iran, and it seems clear that he has done some
background interviews with Iranian figures (although he does not name or cite
them). Because both Iran and Russia are, on their own, two extremely complex
countries, untangling their relationship over the past thirty years is
exponentially more difficult than considering them in isolation.
