US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Iran supplied Russia with missiles to use in its war against Ukraine, stating that Iran had been warned privately that such a move would be "a dramatic escalation," during a press conference last Tuesday with his British counterpart David Lammy before departing to Ukraine. 

After landing at Kyiv on Wednesday, Lammy said that the delivery of Iranian-manufactured missiles to Russia changes the debate on supplying Western long-range missiles to Ukraine for use on targets within Russia. 

"We've now seen this action of Russia acquiring ballistic missiles from Iran, which will further empower their aggression in Ukraine. So, if anyone is taking escalatory action, it would appear to be Mr Putin and Russia," Blinken said during his visit to Kyiv.

This comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called on Western allies, who supply arms for his war with Russia, to loosen boundaries on the use of Western-provided long-range missiles. 

Responding to these allegations, the US and the E3 stated that they would impose new sanctions on Iran targeting the state-owned airline company Iran Air. 

Iran's newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been dubbed by Western media outlets a “reformist” and who has pledged to better ties with the West, has admitted that his country has supplied arms to Russia.

However, he stated that since he took office, “there has not been any such delivery to Russia.”

Iran wooing the West 

Iran has thoroughly denied Western claims that it supplied missiles to Russia, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs coming out last Wednesday to say that these allegations are “faulty intelligence.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani refuted the claims directly after they were made last Tuesday.

 “Any claim that the Islamic Republic of Iran has sold ballistic missiles to the Russian Federation is completely baseless and false,” he said.

Iran’s refutation of supplying arms to Russia comes amid intensifying efforts to better ties with the West. 

Speaking at a press conference on Monday to address these claims, Pezeshkian said "We are not hostile towards the US. They should end their hostility towards us by showing their goodwill in practice."

"We are brothers with the Americans as well," added the Iranian President. 

Pezeshkian ran on a platform that would support warmer ties with all countries except Israel, aiming to foster an air of change around his campaign that ultimately won him the election.

A transactional relationship 

The relationship between Russia and Iran is the centre of speculation, with some Western media outlets positing that in exchange for supplying the missiles in question, Iran would receive fighter jets or nuclear know-how from their Russian partners. 

Some experts argue that the relationship between Iran and Russia is more limited, covering common enemies and diverging views on several geopolitical issues where their interests diverge. 

Head of the International Institute for Iranian Studies Dr Mohammed Al-Sulami describes this relationship as “more of a transactional partnership,” in a commentary piece published during this current rise in tensions.  

According to Dr Al-Sulami, both Russia and Iran have sought to exit their international isolation by joining international organizations and alliances in an attempt to form international relations away from the realm of Western dominance.

On a similar note, the Iranian ambassador in Moscow confirmed Sunday Pezeshkian’s attendance at the coming BRICS summit in Russia.

Still, these efforts have not amounted to significant deepening of ties as some may conclude.

If bilateral trade is accepted as an indicator of the cooperation between the two countries, then it is clear that both failed to upgrade their bilateral relation over the past two decades. 

“Trust between the two countries may not be as strong as it seems,” says Dr Al-Sulami.

Russia and Iran have both been forced into this alliance of chance because of Western sanctions that targeted both countries, because “the two sides need each other too much,” wrote Nikita Smagin, an expert on Iran with the Russian International Affairs Council, in a commentary for Carnegie Politika. 

Smagin argues that there is popular will in Iran to see change and one of these avenues of change is in international relations. 

Even more sanctions

The new sanctions targeting Iran, which used the export of missiles as an excuse, are only the latest in a barrage of sanctions that have targeted the Islamic Republic, which has not always succeeded in exerting pressure on the Persian state. 

Iran Air is the subject of the newest sanctions, abruptly ending aviation agreements with the Islamic Republic. 

Sanctions do not always work to exert pressure on the sanctioned regime in favour of the sanctioner, according to the senior policy fellow for geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations Agathe Demarais’s book Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World against US Interests.

Demarais argues that sanctions act as a diplomatic tool to fill a void between statements and actions, which are popular because they do not threaten soldiers or actual people but instead target money. 

Still, these sanctions are dangerous because, according to the senior policy fellow, they may turn those being sanctioned against the sanctioners themselves rather than looking at the rationale behind the sanctions. 

Sanctions also push states and governments that have been ostracized and punished by the West closer together, forging closer ties with powers known to be in disagreement with Western powers, such as Russia and China.