How Russia Is Supporting Iran’s Repression |
Over the past year, Russia has watched pillars of its external authoritarian ecosystem erode. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s collapse stripped Moscow of its most important Arab client and a central node of its regional power projection. The dramatic U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro at the start of January further exposed the fragility of Russia’s network of partners. Now, as nationwide protests convulse Iran, threatening the Islamic Republic’s survival, how will the Kremlin respond?
Moscow will not rescue Iran through direct military intervention, something that would cross a decades-long Russian red line. Instead, Moscow is doing what it has done repeatedly over the past two decades when authoritarian partners face internal threats: reinforcing the tools of repression, sharing lessons from its own experience managing dissent, and insulating the regime from external pressure. Publicly, the Kremlin has defaulted to familiar language by condemning “foreign interference,” warning against destabilization, and affirming respect for Iranian sovereignty. Privately, however, its role is far more consequential. Moscow continues to provide the key military equipment and sophisticated internet suppression technology that the Iranian regime is using today.
Over the past year, Russia has watched pillars of its external authoritarian ecosystem erode. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s collapse stripped Moscow of its most important Arab client and a central node of its regional power projection. The dramatic U.S. capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro at the start of January further exposed the fragility of Russia’s network of partners. Now, as nationwide protests convulse Iran, threatening the Islamic Republic’s survival, how will the Kremlin respond?
Moscow will not rescue Iran through direct military intervention, something that would cross a decades-long Russian red line. Instead, Moscow is doing what it has done repeatedly over the past two decades when authoritarian partners face internal threats: reinforcing the tools of repression, sharing lessons from its own experience managing dissent, and insulating the regime from external pressure. Publicly, the Kremlin has defaulted to familiar language by condemning “foreign interference,” warning against destabilization, and affirming respect for Iranian sovereignty. Privately, however, its role is far more consequential. Moscow continues to provide the key military equipment and sophisticated internet suppression technology that the Iranian regime is using today.
For Moscow, Iranian regime stability is not merely a question of influence abroad. It is tightly bound to Russia’s own fears of authoritarian vulnerability at home. Russian elites view mass protest through a specific and deeply ingrained lens: contagion, elite defection, and rapid regime collapse. These fears are rooted in formative shocks—the color revolutions of the 2000s, Russia’s 2011-12 protests, and Iran’s 2009 Green Movement—that reshaped how both states conceptualize internal unrest.
This convergence laid the groundwork for sustained cooperation on repression. Over the past decade, Iran has benefited from Russian surveillance technologies, internal security know-how, and institutional lessons drawn from Moscow’s efforts to manage dissent. These include communications interception systems, advanced monitoring tools, interrogation technologies, and software designed to track, deter, and disrupt organized protest networks. Much of this cooperation has been formalized through bilateral agreements framed in the language of public order, counterterrorism, and sovereignty—providing political cover for what is, in practice, regime-security collaboration.
Among these agreements, the text of the two countries’ 2025 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty is revealing. Its provisions are tailor-made for regimes confronting internal unrest, particularly in the digital and information domains. It calls for cooperation on “international information security,” coordination against the use of information technologies for “criminal purposes,” support for state sovereignty in the information space, and the exchange of experience managing national segments of the internet. In effect, it........