A decade ago, pundits were hailing Russia and Iran as the world’s “new power couple”. Together, they seemed to be ushering in a “multipolar world” that would replace the American hegemony of the post-Cold War era. Nations across the developing world eagerly anticipated the end of the “international rules-based order” — a derisive synonym for Washington doing as it pleased.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Iran and Russia’s relationship seemed only to be deepening. Military commitments have increased, especially as Iran has sent thousands of Shared drones to aid the Russian army’s aerial campaign against Kyiv. Economic ties have deepened, with Tehran joining the BRICs group last year. As recently as this January, presidents Putin and Pezeshkian signed a new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. As a result, analysts affirmed the shared commitment to building a “multipolar world”. With Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2025, it looked like Washington would let that world flourish.
Six months on, the cosy relationship of those committed to the “multipolar world” has been blown apart — if things were ever as rosy as they seemed. Two events have shaken the Moscow-Tehran relationship to its foundations: first, Vladimir Putin’s indifferent response to Israel and America’s bombing of Iran; second, the leak of internal Russian documents that reveal a vast ongoing spying operation and deep mutual distrust between the purported allies. In a nutshell, Russia does not trust Iran, and seems unready to offer its ally any military support, while Iran is desperate to get its hands on Russia’s nuclear secrets and remains wary of Putin’s real motives.
Moscow insiders might have been blindsided by the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, but there was never any realistic possibility of Vladimir Putin offering military support. The Russian army is exhausted by the vast losses sustained in Ukraine. Even if the capacity did exist, Putin has long been careful to avoid provoking Israel, which is home to more than a million Russian speakers. Moreover, as Russian military production capacity has improved, Russia’s reliance on Iranian drone technology has decreased. Even if he could, Putin would have little to gain by aiding Iran militarily. Putin and Pezeshkian might talk big at press conferences — indeed, Dmitry Medvedev rapidly backtracked from a veiled threat issued on social media to give Iran nuclear weapons — but their commitment has never been more than “aspirational”.
When the chips are down, and just as was the case with Putin’s rapid retreat from Syria earlier this year, the “multipolar world” has been exposed for what it really is: a toothless alliance of fair-weather friends with no shared ideological vision and without the power or will to offer each other military support. In this world, economically and militarily dominant powers like China — whose commitment to both Russia and Iran is entirely self-interested — will easily be able to assert themselves.
Nonetheless, the creation of a “multipolar world” has been central to Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy since the beginning of his rule a quarter of a century ago. A new National Security Concept, published in January 2000 in the wake of Nato’s bombing of Kosovo — which outraged Russian nationalists — damned US “use of military force”. Again and again, Putin has returned to this theme. “One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States,” he claimed in 2007, “has overstepped its national borders in every way.” In 2022, he claimed that the “multipolar world” was a means for those the West had “robbed… and humiliated” to “get back their fair share of wealth”.
This vision of global order is not based on agreements and cooperation. It is fuelled by grievance and a sense of injustice. Indeed, Iran itself is pursuing the construction of the multipolar world as part of a wider policy of “realpolitik”. Its shared vision with Russia runs only so far as outrage against perceived American global dominance. What and who will dictate terms in the new “multipolar world” cannot but remain vague, since to discuss this would mean confronting irreconcilable differences: Iran is a theocratic and deeply antisemitic state; Russia is an ethno-nationalist construction fuelled by ideological fantasies about the construction of a Eurasian civilisation in the space of the former Soviet Union. When these worlds collide in arguments about nuclear technology or the balance of power in the Middle East, grievance alone cannot provide Tehran and Moscow with a means of affirming their long-term interests or resolving the differences.
Putin might express his displeasure at attacks on Iran, labelling them “unjustifiable and inexcusable”, and Dmitry Medvedev might froth on social media, but Russia will not do much more to help. Likewise, Iran may send drones to Russia to aid in its far-off war in Ukraine, but surely it would do nothing to assist its ally if the Putin regime were in danger of collapse. Indeed, when the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin marched on Moscow in 2023 — perhaps the only real moment of danger Putin has faced in the past two decades — Tehran offered nothing more than words, condemning the action as part of a Western “cognitive war”.
The turmoil of recent weeks and months demonstrates what a “multipolar world” has in store: constant and unpredictable spikes in conflict. Israel provokes Iran; Iran strikes back; now America intervenes. Each move appears impulsive, almost unstrategic, fostering only more chaos. The unpredictability of these events erodes any illusion of an emerging equitable global order — especially when the notion of any nation’s “fair share of wealth” remains tied exclusively to the ambitions and beliefs of individual leaders or elites.
In truth, despite the bravado of authoritarian leaders and the misplaced optimism among certain Western observers, both on the political Right and Left, there was never a credible prospect of stability emerging from this supposed “multipolar world”. Regimes like Putin’s Russia, driven by neo-imperial dreams of controlling the “near abroad”, or Iran’s theocratic rulers brandishing nuclear threats amid antisemitic fervour, look out only for number one.
“There was never a credible prospect of stability emerging from this supposed ‘multipolar world’.”
Grievance politics begets only more grievances. As American influence wanes under Trump’s increasingly self-destructive America, suspicion among erstwhile partners like Russia and Iran may well deepen. With geopolitical boundaries dissolving thanks to technological connectedness, and military fronts reshaped by hybrid warfare and drone technology, the pressure will only grow higher.
Far from ushering in stability or fairness, the era of multipolarity promises only deeper chaos, heightened paranoia, and relentless distrust — a nightmarish Hobbesian world fragmenting ever faster. If Moscow was surprised by America’s intervention in Iran, or by Iran’s spying campaign, it should not have been: both of these events are reflections of the order that Vladimir Putin has spent twenty-five years trying to build. Russia’s, and Vladimir Putin’s, power in this world will only ever be weaker — and their authority over the “near abroad” will always be limited by the need to fear attack from all sides.
