Iran should be well aware of Russia’s current situation. Until the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Islamic Republic was the most heavily sanctioned country in the world. She was only allowed to import a few goods from Europe and the USA.
Meanwhile, the fact that the country on the Persian Gulf is so rejected by part of the world community suits Kremlin boss Putin. After all, he’s been looking for a partner since the beginning of Western sanctions against his country – in the economic sense, of course. And things seem to be going well with oil-rich and fate-sharing Iran – so well that the Russian president flew to Tehran on his first trip abroad after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, where he decided to work more closely with ruler Ebrahim Raisi.
In the past few months, the trade volume between the two countries is said to have increased by more than 30 percent. And it should continue like this: 80 large Russian companies are now traveling to Iran to conduct further commercial transactions, reports “Welt”.
A crucial deal: Gazprom wants to invest 40 billion dollars in Iranian gas and oil fields in the coming years. Russia gets combat drones for the war in Ukraine. There are already reports from the war zone that Iranian drones have been used and are even said to have recently killed civilians in Odessa.
But the country on the Persian Gulf is not only proving to be an attractive ally for Russia when it comes to raw materials and goods. Tehran’s know-how in circumventing export bans is also extremely attractive to Putin.
Russia could benefit from this, especially when it comes to oil exports. Iran has its oil tankers on the high seas switch off the locating signal and then continue as “ghost ships”. Somewhere, the tankers then load the oil onto other ships – without anyone being able to follow it. The practice of blending Iranian oil with oil from other countries also obscures the origin of the raw material. Since the oil tankers are mostly registered with letterbox companies, tracing them back to Iran is almost impossible.
Putin’s ships are also said to have traveled in this way. According to British media, the number of Russian “ghost ships” has tripled since the beginning of the war. These often set sail with the label “Destination unknown”, writes “The Wall Street Journal”.
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Should the oil embargo against Iran fall after a new nuclear deal with the international community, a profitable Iranian-Russian swap deal could result. Iran could import oil from Russia while exporting its own oil. These suspicions have already been confirmed from the republic on the Persian Gulf, reports “Welt”. The Iranian Supreme Leader’s foreign policy adviser, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said: “We receive oil from Russia and Kazakhstan via the Caspian Sea to use for domestic consumption and then ship oil in the same volume to their customers in the south.”
Moscow also wants to learn something from Tehran in civil aviation. Because of the sanctions, both countries can no longer get spare parts for their planes, and flights are no longer insured. Iran is trying to solve this problem with “aircraft cannibalism”, i.e. removing parts and materials from decommissioned aircraft and replicating the parts. Now Russia also wants to cannibalize 40 percent of the fleet of the Russian low-cost airline Pobeda for spare parts. The largest Russian airline, the state-controlled Aeroflot, has already started to do so, according to media reports.
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