Arash Aramesh

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the highest ranking Iranian official May 26 to openly criticize Russia’s Iran policy. In recent months, a number of Iranian officials, including conservative members of parliament, had criticized the positions taken by the government of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Raja news, a pro-government website with close ties to the office of President Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president warned the Russians about their recent behavior and said, “Russia should abstain from doing something that would place them among the ranks of Iran’s historic enemies.”

Ahmadinejad added, “Iran and Russia are neighbors and we are friends naturally,” but “the first requirement for friendship is mutual respect and this is our most basic request from the other side.”

According to Fars news, a semi-official news agency with intimate ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ahmadinejad turned his criticism directly towards President Medvedev and said, “Explaining the behavior of Medvedev to our people has become very difficult today. Our people don’t know whether they [the Russians] are our friends or are after something else.”

He asserted, “If I were the Russian president, I would have thought harder about those decisions concerning the great and civilization building nation of Iran.”

Fars reported that an advisor to President Medvedev reacted to Ahmadinejad’s criticism and said Russia’s positions were designed to serve Russian national interests and nothing else. According to BBC Persian service, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Ahmadinejad’s comments were “emotional.” A Kremlin spokesperson accused the Iranian president of “trying to fool the masses.”

Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the United States lost its role as Iran’s chief international ally. During the reign of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Cold War, Iran did not have a patron among the major powers of the day. After Khomeini’s death and the election of Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Iran began to move closer to the Russian Federation, which had just experienced the demise of the Soviet Union. In this new environment, and following the creation of the new world order with the US as the only super power, Russia became increasingly involved in various areas in Iran, ranging from the oil and gas sector to supplying Iran with modern weaponry.

But this relationship has never been an equal one. The Russians have had much more to gain that their Iranian counterparts. Iran’s grand concessions to the Russians were usually made out of necessity and stemmed from weakness. The nuclear reactor in Bushehr, for instance, was supposed to be finished by the Russians almost twenty years ago. Not only did the Russians failed to meet their deadline several times, but they also raised their price every time they resumed working at the Bushehr facility. Iran never took the Russians to court for it knew full well that no one else would replace the Russians to finish the Bushehr project.

Another hot issue causing tension between the two countries is delayed delivery of the sophisticated S-300 missiles which Iran purchased and fully paid for a few years ago. Russia, under pressure from the US and Israel, has failed to deliver these missiles. The S-300 missiles can be effectively used to protect Iranian nuclear facilities against a possible air strike.

Most importantly, Iran had counted on the Russian veto in the UN Security Council, if the likely event of sanctions. Recent developments demonstrated that the Russians were on board with the US on imposing further sanctions against Iran and were not going to use their veto power to stop a UN Security Council resolution.

Ahmadinejad’s remarks should not be interpreted as the end of Russian- Iranian cooperation, but rather as Iran’s expression of deep frustration with Russia’s behavior.