July 24, 2024
Hanna Notte and Jim Lamson
The following is an excerpt from War on the Rocks.
On April 2, 2024, Ukraine’s military struck several buildings in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan region. The strike demonstrated Ukraine’s steadily improving ability to hold targets deep inside Russia at risk. But it was also a stark reminder of just how far Iranian-Russian defense cooperation has come since 2022: As of last year, Russia has indigenized the production of Iranian-designed Shahed drones at Alabuga — practicing a degree of cooperation with Tehran that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. The Shaheds and other Iranian-origin drones deployed by Russia have created a severe headache for Ukraine, leading its military planners to resort to the April strike.
From the 1990s to 2022, Russia provided, off and on, important military assistance to Iran across the ground, aerospace, and naval domains, largely focused on hardware instead of technology transfers. In addition to Russian support to Iran’s nuclear program, this assistance included the provision of tanks, armored vehicles, anti-tank missiles, combat aircraft, helicopters, and surface-to-air missiles, among others. Assistance — at least in the 1990s — also entailed unofficial transfers by low-level Russian entities to Iran’s ballistic missile and suspected chemical and biological weapons programs.
Since 2022, Russia’s defense relationship with Iran has taken a big leap forward. Cooperation has moved past the previous patron-client dynamic, with Iran emerging as a key enabler of Russia’s air and ground campaign in Ukraine. Military-technical collaboration has intensified in existing areas, while also advancing to new frontiers such as the joint development of novel uncrewed aerial vehicles. Amid a general weakening of past constraints on cooperation, Iran and Russia have also taken steps to further institutionalize their defense relationship.
Continue reading at War on the Rocks.
