Before and during the January 19, 2022 summit meeting between Russian President Putin and Iranian President Raisi, the two presidents and top officials from both countries expressed great satisfaction with how close Russian-Iranian relations have grown. Both predicted that they would grow even closer still. Yet amidst all this bilateral bonhomie, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, made a statement to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that raised doubts about how close the Russian-Iranian relationship is now or will grow in the future.
According to IRNA, “At the end of his remarks, Amirabdollahian underscored that the Iranian foreign ministry as the country’s diplomatic apparatus is dutybound to defend Iran’s political independence. He said the policy of ‘No to West, No to East’ lies at the hardcore of Iran’s political independence, stressing that his ministry will zealously pursue the policy of creating a balance in its ties with both western and eastern countries to safeguard the nation’s interests.” This went well beyond Amirabdollahian’s subsequent, more well publicized statement that Iran would now “consider” direct talks with the U.S. instead of indirect contact via European mediators at the ongoing talks in Vienna about the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the 2015 Iranian accord that the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018 is known.
What did Amirabdollahian mean by this? “No to West, No to East,” of course, is similar to the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s, “neither East nor West” dictum. When Khomeini was alive, though, Tehran was at very much at odds with Moscow as well as Washington. Soviet forces were occupying Afghanistan to Iran’s east and Moscow was supporting Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran during most of the 1980s. So Khomeini’s “neither East nor West” formula made sense back then. Now, though, Tehran and Moscow are both emphasizing how good their relations are with each other, as well as how bad both their relations are with the United States.
So why would Amirabdollahian now say, “No to West, No to East,” and stress how his ministry will, “zealously pursue the policy of creating a balance in its ties with both western and eastern countries”?
Was this an indication of Tehran offering an olive branch to the U.S.? Or was he referring to the West more broadly? Perhaps he was referring to the West ex-U.S. (ie, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, etc.)? In Khomeini’s time during the Cold War, the West unequivocally meant the U.S. and Western Europe while the East meant the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. Perhaps now, though, Amirabdollahian said, “East,” in reference to China, which has become an economic superpower and is well on its way to becoming a military one. Russia, of course, is north of Iran, and so Amirabdollahian might not have been referring to it at all here. But this seems unlikely.
It is also possible that Amirabdollahian made his “No to West, No to East” statement more in deference to Khomeini’s legacy and did not intend it as a comment on the current state of Russian-Iranian relations.
But whatever the reason why Amiraabdollahian said what he did, it was probably not what Moscow wanted or even expected to hear him say.