New Russia-Iran partnership agreement: short of an alliance with hidden risks - including provision of nuclear weapons to Tehran.

Russia - Iran strategic partnership falls short of the hype that it has received.

• Last month, Iranian President Pezeshkin and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a strategic partnership, raising numerous questions about its broader implications.

• This partnership, though formalized through an official agreement, primarily builds upon pre-existing military, economic, and political collaborations that have developed over the last decade.

• And this collaboration has seen a major boost since the outset of the Ukraine war in February 2022.

• Bilateral trade between Russia and Iran stands at mere $5bn but is quickly deepening and even though we are yet to see some numbers for 2025, during the first quarter of 2024, the bilateral trade saw a significant increase of 48% compared to the same period in 2023.

• And in 2023, just a year after the invasion, Russia invested $2.76 billion in Iran (primarily directed towards Iran's industrial, mining, and transportation sectors) during the fiscal year ending March 20, 2023, making it Iran's largest foreign investor.

• And this is just economics and trade.

• Russia has launched more than 8,000 Iran-supplied Shahed-136 drones at Ukraine (and is currently building a factory in Russia with Iranian help - to scale production to 6k a year).

• Tehran has furthermore sent over Fath-360 ballistic missiles: this solid-fueled, short-range ballistic missile has a range of approximately 300 kilometers and can carry a 500-kilogram warhead.

• In 2024, Iran supplied Russia with hundreds of these missiles.

• And their accuracy/CEP score is way higher than the longer-range missiles launched at Israel

• (side note: those launched at Israel in April and October 2024 sometimes hundreds of meters off-target. Generally, the further the distance the lesser is the accuracy - making Fateh-110s more useful for Russia.)

• For all these reasons, the recent Iranian–Russian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement, signed on January 17, has been heralded as a "breakthrough" by both Moscow and Tehran.

• However, this pact stops short of forming a military alliance, underscoring the nuanced dynamics that define the Russia-Iran relationship.

• Instead, the treaty serves as a formal acknowledgment of the deepening ties that have emerged since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

• It merely formalizes what has already been a growing partnership rooted in shared strategic interests and mutual geopolitical calculations.

• We shall unpack likely reasons for both choosing to avoid a more definitive commitment in the form of a formal military alliance.

Rhetoric vs. reality: