Russia's Foreign Policy toward Iran: A Critical Geopolitics Perspective

Abstract

Russia's foreign policy stance on nuclear Iran has been a subject of debate. Why has Moscow oscillated between resistance to sanctions and support for punitive measures against Iran in the meantime supplying Tehran with new arms technologies, despite the protestations from the USA? This study engages with this question. It argues that the conventional approaches linking Russia's foreign policy to either geostrategic calculations or considerations of economic efficiency are insufficient because they do not take into consideration the changing conceptions of geopolitics held by Russia. This study shows that a pragmatic application of critical geopolitics, which calls for the examination of Russia's foreign policy through the lens of its own ‘geopolitics code’, can substantially enhance our understanding of Moscow's foreign policy.