Reprinted from The Realist Review:
Earlier this month, on December 17, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi paid a working visit to Moscow where he held a high-level meeting and press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Although the visit went almost entirely unnoticed by many observers of international affairs, it marked yet another significant milestone in Russo-Iranian relations, signaling a further deepening in ties between Moscow and Tehran amid the rise of a new multipolar world order.
Both Lavrov and, even more pointedly, Araghchi underscored the main aim and achievement of the meeting – a program for intensifying cooperation and consultation between the Russian and Iranian foreign ministries over the next three years. In his remarks, Araghchi underscored the historic signing as a “roadmap” or an “action plan” of cooperation between the two sides, building on their Treaty of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership inked at the beginning of this year. Araghchi likewise underscored the degree of closeness that had developed between Moscow and Tehran over the course of 2025. He maintained that Russo-Iranian cooperation had strengthened in virtually all areas and tracks, especially in the military-technical and political spheres. Meanwhile, consultations between the two countries, already held regularly, had grown in frequency and intensity throughout 2025. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had met with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin five times “over the last 18 months,” Araghchi underscored. “This, indeed, is a very important number,” he concluded, emphatically. For his part, Lavrov highlighted that his talks with Araghchi took place “as always, in a friendly, constructive, and trust-based atmosphere.” Such statements indicate a sincere, steady, and consistent deepening of relations, contradicting periodic Western reports, particularly in the British press, underscoring areas of disagreement between the two Eurasian giants.
Although the Araghchi-Lavrov meeting had been planned in advance, it was given additional impetus by recent news reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet US President Donald Trump on December 29. Bibi’s main demand? To resume the Israeli-US “12-day war” on Iran that has been halted since June. The main justification for the attack will no longer be Iran’s nuclear program, but instead its sophisticated ballistic missile defense system that had succeeded in wreaking havoc across Israel. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi has stressed, “Israel’s military doctrine does not allow for any of its regional foes to deter it or challenge its military dominance. Iran’s missile program currently does exactly that.” Araghchi’s visit to Russia, therefore acquired additional significance, augmenting a growing strategic partnership between two major BRICS countries.
While the threat of a new Israeli-instigated war with Iran looms large, it is only the most pressing of a litany of security concerns facing both Moscow and Tehran. As Araghchi and Lavrov noted, these areas of mutual concern include the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, security dilemmas in Transcaucasia, stability concerns in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Of these, one zone of particular interest is Transcaucasia, a small but critical region sandwiched between Russia to the north and Iran to the south. Here the Israel-allied Republic of Azerbaijan has increasingly goose-stepped its way toward NATO, even going so far as completely aligning its military to NATO standards.
Emboldened by its conquest and ethnic cleansing of Armenian-inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku has made no secret of its efforts to gradually orient itself toward the Western alliance. It also continues to openly espouse extensive territorial claims on neighboring Armenia and Iran, confident in its belief that military might will serve its interests far better than any diplomatic negotiation. At the same time, despite such actions and rhetoric, both Moscow and Tehran have taken a cautious approach toward President Ilham Aliyev’s blustery bravado, with both expressing hope that Baku will “return to reason” and even participate constructively in the Western section of the International North-South Transport Corridor.
Meanwhile, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has also vocally backed the idea of pivoting toward the West, to such a degree that he even sacrificed his own co-ethnics in Nagorno-Karabakh. Already broadly unpopular in Armenia, Pashinyan’s domestic reputation took another hit in August when he signed a declaration with Aliyev endorsing the US-backed “Trump corridor” (or TRIPP) in Armenia’s southern Syunik Province, granting a free hand to Israel, Turkey, and the US on Iran’s sensitive northern frontier. Faced with widespread accusations of treason at home, Pashinyan has since moved to crack down on the political opposition and the Armenian Apostolic Church, the country’s main religious institution since its Christianization in the 4th century. At the same time, Pashinyan has turned to the EU to bolster his flagging domestic position, while imposing himself over an increasingly recalcitrant Armenian population. “I am the government,” Pashinyan declared in one recent speech in Yerevan, channeling France’s Louis XIV. For his part, Lavrov has accused the EU of meddling in Armenia’s internal affairs.
The “Trump corridor” has ramifications well beyond Transcaucasia. Backed by an unholy alliance of US neocons, Israeli Likudniks, Western war interests, and big energy corporations, the plan aims to remove Russia and Iran from the Caucasus altogether while creating alternative “energy conduits” linking post-Soviet Central Asia to the EU. The extension of US geopolitical influence into Central Asia, particularly Kazakhstan, is of particular alarm, not only to Russia and Iran, but also, ultimately, Trump’s chief geopolitical rival – China. The idea itself is not new. Zbigniew Brzezinski expounded on it in his Grand Chessboard. Meanwhile, Clinton’s “Russia hand,” Strobe Talbott, once praised such a policy approach in his correspondences with George F. Kennan, promoting an “exasperated” response from the then-93-year-old veteran US statesman. Now the idea has been given new life under Trump, despite his “no war” campaign pledges.
Although such schemes present a clear and direct strategic threat to Russia, Moscow has generally taken a publicly restrained stance toward them. By contrast, Iran has been far less reticent in voicing its concerns on the matter, with some Iranian commentators even giving the “Trump corridor” the alternative moniker of “NATO’s Turan Corridor.” During the Araghchi-Lavrov press conference, one Iranian journalist pointedly asked Araghchi about the dangers facing Iran and Russia in the South Caucasus. In his response, the Iranian foreign minister stressed that Moscow and Tehran hold a “clear position” on the region, as articulated in the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty – specifically Article 12, which expressed overt opposition to the presence of any external actors in the larger Eurasian region. Araghchi further added that both the South Caucasus and Central Asia together are areas “that must ensure security” in the critical zone of Eurasia adjoining both Russia and Iran. Any “non-regional presence,” Araghchi maintained, is inadmissible in the view of Moscow and Tehran, including, presumably, any “Trump corridor.”
In the backdrop of all these developments stands the much greater geopolitical context of the rise of global multipolarity, or the “rise of the rest.” This theme of multipolarity was clearly and unambiguously discernible throughout the entire Araghchi-Lavrov press conference. Both foreign ministers stressed the need for the “democratization” of the international order and unity against the “impunity” of the United States, particularly in light not only of the recent US and Israeli war on Iran, but also the growing attacks on Venezuela by the Trump administration. “They consider themselves untouchable,” noted Araghchi, who added that “they’re using brute force to achieve favorable terms.” Above all, he stressed that the US was “pushing the international community into the atmosphere of the jungle” and that both Russia and Iran were committed to opposing such developments by adhering to the legal institutions safeguarding the post-World War II global order. Lavrov concurred with Araghchi’s assessments. “It is necessary to implement these principles [of the UN Charter], respect them, and apply them in practice not selectively, on a case-by-case basis, but exclusively in their entirety, completeness, and inter-relatedness,” Lavrov noted. Both stressed continued mutual support against “illegal sanctions” imposed on Iran and Russia by the West. Taking to X/Twitter, Araghchi further stressed that the December 17 agreements “will enable stronger action against unlawful Western sanctions, promote regional stability, advance infrastructure projects, and block illegal measures in the UN Security Council.”
Thus, while the December 17 agreements may have gone “under the radar” of many geopolitical analysts, they represent a significant step not only in the intensification of Russo-Iranian relations, but also in global developments more broadly. As multipolarity proceeds to rise, advocates of unipolarity in Washington’s Beltway will not retreat into introspection and policy reevaluation, but will continue to double-down on the same failed policies in an eager bid to preserve what they believed was an era of American primacy. Whether such policies are framed as “liberal interventionist” or “transactionalist” makes no difference as their objectives remain essentially the same. In this regard, the Beltway “blob” is not motivated by any desire to “defend democracy,” but rather by the cynical self-interest of the various lobbies that continue pushing for war – e.g., the need to continue producing weapons to ensure the continued generation of profits.
Therefore, until America’s domestic troubles become too great to ignore, the stream of crusades to “counter” Russia, Iran, and China will continue into 2026, with regions such as Transcaucasia and Central Asia becoming new theatres of soft power competition and potential geopolitical conflict. From the view of Moscow and Tehran, the disastrous record of the Trump administration in 2025 already indicates that “business as usual” continues in Washington. The Strategic Partnership Treaty of January and the December 17 agreements thus function as effective “insurance policies” to maintain security and stability in Eurasia amid the rise of the rest.
Pietro A. Shakarian, PhD, is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a lecturer in history at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan. He is the author of Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin (Indiana University Press, 2025).
