Seven years after Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA), the unpredictable U.S. president announced the resumption of negotiations. These began in Oman on April 13. Some see the discussions between the Americans and Russians as an attempt to “pin down” the latter in order to exert maximum pressure on Tehran or even, if negotiations fail, to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. This would be to underestimate the importance of the ties between Moscow and Tehran. In fact, the “North-South corridor” that the two capitals are working on is part of a common geopolitical perspective on a Eurasian scale.
On April 7, Donald Trump announced the upcoming opening of negotiations with Tehran, with the stated goal of permanently thwarting Iran’s military nuclear program. In reality, this program has made significant progress over time. The JCPOA, signed in 2015, aimed to limit Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium to 300 kilograms, at a purity level of 3.67%, which was already a significant decrease from the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), reinforced by resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council. This was all the more significant given that Tehran retained control of its ballistic program and, through its proxies (the “Shia arc”), was destabilizing the Middle East. The Shia Islamic regime now has eight tons of uranium enriched to 3.67%, to which we need to add 275 kilograms enriched to 60%; the time required to cross the threshold of military nuclearization would be a few months. And the International Atomic Energy Agency no longer has any inspection rights over Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Uncertain negotiations between Washington and Tehran
On the other hand, the virtual destruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the weakening of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the Israeli Defense Forces’ raids on Iran’s anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses have greatly weakened the Shia Islamic regime. All that remains of the “Shia arc” are the Houthis in Yemen, who are being bombed by U.S. forces. While playing along with the negotiations, Washington is strengthening its hand by deploying B-2 heavy bombers equipped with bunker-buster bombs to the Diego Garcia base1. A second U.S. carrier strike group is sailing toward the area and other military assets are on their way to U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. In short, everything required for coercive diplomacy, a precursor to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
All this would be much more impressive if Donald Trump, with his bluster and flip-flopping, had not seriously undermined the strategic credibility of the United States. Especially since, given the consistency and resolve of Secretary of State Marco Rubio on these issues, the negotiations have been entrusted to Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s neighbor and Gulf partner, a great specialist in the geopolitics of “clubhouses.” The very same man whom the U.S. president has appointed as “special envoy” to Russia has become infatuated with Vladimir Putin, whose Slavic-Orthodox charm he appreciates. Between planning a U.S.-Russian “reset” – which makes no sense on a macroeconomic level but could be very profitable for a few insiders accustomed to insider trading – and evoking a future golden Riviera on the coast of Gaza, Steve Witkoff is supposed to bring the Iranian regime to its senses.
It is to be feared that our man will overlook the close ties between Moscow and Tehran and believe that business promises will be enough to break them. Since the conception and implementation of “Primakov diplomacy2” in the 1990s, these ties have been strengthened and deepened, albeit with obstacles and periods of stagnation. Admittedly, it is open to debate what meaning should be given to the term “alliance”. The fact remains that Moscow and Tehran agreed to intervene militarily in Syria in 2015, even before the ink was dry on the JCPOA. Their combined intervention enabled Bashar al-Assad’s regime to survive until the fall of 2024. The Russian armed forces’ bogging down in Ukraine and the serious setbacks inflicted by the IDF on Iran’s allies explain the inability of the Moscow-Tehran axis to prevent the fall of the Syrian Rais, who has now become a Moscow annuitant.
The reality of a Russian-Iranian alliance
In the meantime, Tehran will have supported Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine by supplying it with weapons (shahed drones and ballistic missiles) and helping to circumvent Western sanctions. In return, Russia is stepping up its military-industrial cooperation with Iran, including in the aeronautics (training of pilots, particularly for the Sukhoi Su-35) and aerospace sectors. Three days before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, Moscow and Tehran renewed their “comprehensive strategic partnership,” which was ratified by the Duma on April 7, 2025. The text provides for closer political, economic, financial, logistical, and energy ties, increased “military cooperation,” intelligence sharing, and the fight against “terrorism” and “common threats.”
According to the terms in force in Tehran, Iran will benefit from Russia’s assistance in waging its “Jihad of Knowledge,” particularly in the space sector (detection and early warning capabilities) and in the civil nuclear sector, the only one whose existence the regime acknowledges (Russian engineers are working on the Bushehr nuclear power plant). But let us not worry. We are unlikely to see Russian and Iranian soldiers in the same trench; this multifaceted alliance is not really an alliance because it does not include “Article 5” (NATO’s mutual defense clause). Indeed, many Western experts refuse to admit that different types of alliances can coexist because they consider NATO to be the archetype. The game played by Russia and Iran, like that of China and North Korea, consists of lending each other a helping hand and dividing up the theaters of action in order to put pressure on the alliances of the United States, which are threatened by the phenomenon of geostrategic overstretching (Paul Kennedy’s “overstretch”).
Among the many links between Russia and Iran, the plan for a North-South logistics corridor from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf seems particularly significant in terms of the geopolitical processes and ideas driving the leaders of these two revisionist powers. This is a project that is already a quarter of a century old, the “International North-South Transport Corridor” (INSTC), which is supposed to shake up the geopolitics of global trade routes. Its completion would contribute to the affirmation of a new world economic order centered on Eurasia, in which the BRICS+, led by Moscow and Beijing, would be the functional equivalent of the G7 (a G9).
A Eurasian geopolitical axis
It seems that the upheaval in the regional situation to the detriment of Armenia and Russia’s greater investment in relations with Azerbaijan and Iran have made it possible to overcome these obstacles. Tehran has secured the postponement of the East-West transport corridor between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which was intended to reach the Caspian Basin and Turkestan. The autocracy of Aliyev – who has regained Nagorno-Karabakh and also benefits from transport corridors to Western markets (see the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum gas pipeline) – somewhat thwarted in its plans, is content to see Azerbaijan become a regional crossroads at the intersection of the North-South and East-West axes. A number of projects have already begun.
Beyond Baku’s regional ambitions, it is important to emphasize the significance of these projects for Russia, hence its desire for close and sustained relations with Iran. This is evidenced by the willingness to finance, through a Russian bank loan, the railway works between the city of Rasht, mentioned above, and the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, on the Persian Gulf: the railway line already exists but needs to be doubled, which should be carried out by a Russian company as well as Russian engineers and workers. While it cannot be ruled out that the costs, corruption, and bureaucracy of the two countries will ultimately defeat political will, the construction and modernization of the Astara-Rasht and Rasht-Bandar Abbas rail links would connect Saint Petersburg and the Neva River to the Persian Gulf. Such a corridor would strengthen the links and trade carried out across the Caspian Sea and would unite the destinies of Russia and Iran.
We need to broaden our focus even further. Russia’s objective is to create a logistical and geo-economic axis toward India, South and Southeast Asia, via Azerbaijan, the Caspian ports and a “land bridge” between this sea and the Persian Gulf, providing access to the Indian Ocean. With a length of 7,200 kilometers, which could be covered in about ten days, the river-land routes see the Five Seas system3 – and maritime routes between Saint Petersburg and Mumbai would provide an alternative to the routes currently used by Russian ships to reach Asia, via coastal seas (the Baltic and Black Seas) over which Moscow no longer has geostrategic control.
These ships now depart from the Baltic, pass through the Danish straits to reach the North Sea and the Atlantic, enter the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar, pass through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, before entering the Indian Ocean and reaching Mumbai. This is a journey of 16,000 kilometers, requiring thirty to forty-five days of sailing. From the Black Sea, the route and sailing times are certainly shorter, but the war in Ukraine, the ability of Ukrainian missiles and naval drones to reach Russian ships, and Turkey’s control of the access routes to the Mediterranean (the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits) are all geostrategic constraints on Russian navigation.
To conclude
In short, Russia’s “North-South corridor” program is a new variation on the theme of the warm water strategy, conceived in the 18th Century, when the Russian Empire set out to conquer Chersonesos (Crimea) and the Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea, or Catherine II’s “New Greece” and “New Russia.” In the current geopolitical situation, this grand Russian strategy implies a solid and lasting alliance between Moscow and Tehran, which should rule out abandoning the Iranian regime on the pretext of some oil and gas “deal” in the Arctic with one or other of the wheeler-dealers surrounding Donald Trump (a “honey trap” that greatly excites Steve Witkoff). All the more so since this Russian-Iranian strategy is part of the geopolitical vision of a Sino-Russian “Greater Eurasia,” whose assumption would mean the end of a long Western hegemony, of which the United States has been the geostrategic heir until now. Is Donald Trump aware of what is at stake? Unfortunately, the question is purely rhetorical. For him, the world is a Monopoly board.
Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration – populated by amateurs, followers of a mythical Gilded Age, and swindlers – seems to have forgotten the fundamental parameters of the American grand strategy, which has always been concerned with the Eurasian Heartland. At King Ubu’s court, the few “Reaganites” with a sense of history, such as (perhaps) Marc Rubio, are marginalized by lackeys and yes men. It is therefore to be feared that the U.S.-Russian reset, on the one hand, and the policy of maximum pressure on Tehran, on the other, will not achieve their objectives, namely the separation of Russian and Iranian destinies and Iran’s renunciation of its nuclear program. Have the repercussions and counter-effects of a new diplomatic failure – as in North Korea during Trump’s first term, and, most likely, as in the establishment of a real peace agreement in Ukraine today – even been considered? Let us not beat about the bush: if Donald Trump is not reined in and constrained, he will lead the United States to geopolitical self-destruction. The “American century” is coming to an end, and the Old West must prepare for it.
Addendum: on the warm water strategy
The warm water strategy corresponds to the centuries-old efforts of the Russian Empire, and later the USSR, to gain access to ice-free seas south of Russian-Soviet territory. This Russian geohistory truly began under Catherine II, with the conquest of the northern shores of the Black Sea in the 18th Century. In an almost constant struggle with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire sought to gain access to the Mediterranean. Beyond geostrategic factors, this great undertaking took on a messianic character, particularly in the writings of Dostoevsky: “The Golden Horn and Constantinople must be ours… for not only is it an illustrious port commanding the straits, ‘the center of the universe,’ ‘the ark of the Earth,’ but because Russia, this formidable giant, must finally escape from the closed room where it grew up to the point that its head is now hitting the ceiling, to fill its lungs with the free air of the seas and oceans […]. Our mission goes much further, much deeper. We Russians are truly indispensable to all Eastern Christianity and to the future of Orthodoxy on Earth until its unity is accomplished.”(1877)
In the Mediterranean, the warm water strategy was linked to the “Eastern Question,” which was central to power relations during the 19th Century and the beginning of the following century. Anglo-Russian rivalries over Persia and Afghanistan were linked to Saint Petersburg’s desire to gain access to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. However, the growing hostility of the protagonists of this “Great Game” (the Bear against the Whale) toward Wilhelm II’s Germany ultimately led to an Anglo-Russian agreement that paved the way for the Triple Entente (1907). During the Cold War, Soviet ambitions in the Mediterranean and the Middle East were seen as a continuation of the warm water strategy, evidence of a certain historical continuity between Tsarist Russia and the “Red Empire” (the USSR). During the final phase of this conflict, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979) was perceived through this prism. More than military control of a buffer zone in Central Asia, the invasion was seen in Western capitals as a threat to the Persian Gulf and the oil route, then the jugular vein of the West. In 2015, Russia’s intervention in Syria revived memories of the warm water strategy (September 2015), an undertaking that had been weakened since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024 and the evacuation of Russian bases in Tartus and Hmeimim. Beyond historical vicissitudes, the warm water strategy is a significant geopolitical representation of Russia’s power ambitions.
Associate professor of history and geography and researcher at the French Institute of Geopolitics (University of Paris VIII). Author of several books, he works within the Thomas More Institute on geopolitical and defense issues in Europe. His research areas cover the Baltic-Black Sea region, post-Soviet Eurasia, and the Mediterranean.
Footnotes
- An Anglo-American base located in the Chagos Archipelago, on territory that was under British sovereignty until the islands were recently returned to Mauritius. The United States considers this base to be “an almost indispensable platform” for operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa. In fact, it serves as a hub for refueling, maintenance, and coordination of military operations, allowing U.S. forces to deploy quickly to strategic areas.
- Named after Yevgeny Primakov, Minister of Foreign Affairs and then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation from 1996 to 1999, he was an important KGB leader and, according to some sources, remained one after the end of the USSR.
- The Five Seas system is a network of river links and canals that places Moscow at the heart of the interconnections between the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea. The Volga River is its main artery. This system accounts for more than two-thirds of Russia’s river and maritime transport.