Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, committing their countries to oppose interference by third parties in each other’s internal and external affairs. Moscow and Tehran celebrated the treaty as the culmination of growing ties between the two regimes.
Yet when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran in late February—the second in just eight months, following last summer’s 12-day war—Russia mostly stood idly by. Putin called the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “cynical violation of all norms of
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