Lavrov backs Tehran, but does Russia also gain from the US-Iran crisis?

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pledged Moscow’s support for Iran when he met his counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, and President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran on Monday.

On Tuesday, Araghchi wrote on X: “Never in our history have Iran and Russia worked as closely as now.”

But Russia’s position is not straightforward.

The war on Iran, launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, has pushed up oil prices and handed Moscow a windfall. Washington has now also eased sanctions on Russian energy to bring down fuel costs – a major complaint from consumers in the US, who will shortly vote in mid-term elections.

So how close are Moscow and Tehran, and does Russia really want the US-Iran crisis to end? Here’s what you need to know:

Why has Lavrov visited Tehran now?

To shore up a wartime partnership, and to shape what happens next.

Nader Hashemi, an associate professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that with both countries fighting wars, Lavrov’s “primary motive is to solidify that alliance”.

He said the aim is to advance each side’s war goals: “Russia against Ukraine, Iran against the United States.”

But Hashemi said the main reason is that the US-Israeli attack has left the Middle East regional order unravelling, and Moscow wants a say in what replaces it.

“I suspect there’s a longer-term agenda here,” he said.

How close are Russia and Iran?

They have a strategic partnership, though their treaty stops short of a military alliance.

Putin and Pezeshkian signed a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty in Moscow in January 2025.

It came into force that October, but unlike Russia’s pact with North Korea, it has no mutual defence clause.

Ties deepened after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Iran sharing Shahed drone technology that enabled Russia to build its own version.

In 2024, Washington accused Tehran of also sending Russia ballistic missiles.

In Tehran, Lavrov said Russian specialists who had left Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant – heavily damaged in US strikes – would gradually return.

Other countries are aware of the closeness of their relationship.

On Sunday, Lavrov was in Bahrain for a strategic dialogue session between Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and he was urged by its members to use Moscow’s influence with Tehran to press for “serious dialogue” and restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic Gulf waterway that Iran effectively closed shortly after the war began earlier this year.

Has Russia helped Iran in the war against the US?

Not openly.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has condemned what it called the “unlawful aggression” of the US and Israel, but Moscow has not intervened militarily.

US media outlets, citing intelligence reports, have said Russia and China supplied Iran with satellite imagery and weapons components. US President Donald Trump has dismissed those reports.

How has Russia benefitted from the US-Iran war?

Significantly.

After Iran effectively closed Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global oil and natural gas supplies are shipped during peacetime, the price of Brent crude rose from around $72 a barrel to as high as $120 a barrel in March and April. On Tuesday, Brent – the global benchmark – was trading at above $109 a barrel.

By April, revenue from Russia’s biggest oil tax had roughly doubled to about $9bn, according to Reuters calculations, as buyers unable to get supplies from the Gulf switched.

Since March, the US Treasury has issued waivers allowing sales of Russian oil already loaded at sea. This month, it waived sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027.

On Friday, Trump suspended newly passed sanctions on Russia and on buyers of its oil and gas. The move has sparked outrage among members of his own Republican Party who backed the sanctions bill.

On Sunday, he claimed he did not want to “drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table” in Ukraine talks.

“The Kremlin is using this opportunity to align Russian and American interests on Ukraine to try to stop Ukraine from continuing its attacks on Russian refineries,” John Lough, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and a senior research fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, told Al Jazeera.

“This has led to the breakdown of relations between Trump and Zelenskyy, which suits Moscow’s purposes because it is putting US policy in conflict with Europe’s policy on Ukraine,” he said.

So, does Russia really want the US-Iran war to end?

For now, Russia would appear to have every reason to want the stand-off between Washington and Tehran to continue, as it is “benefiting from higher oil prices and from the diesel squeeze that has encouraged Trump to lift sanctions and allow Russia to supply diesel to the US market,” Lough said.

But Nikita Smagin, an analyst on Russia’s role in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera on Monday that while Russia certainly has a partial interest in the conflict continuing, on balance, it likely does not want to see it escalate, as the consequences could be unpredictable.

Could Russia be an effective mediator in the US-Iran war?

Moscow talks to all sides caught up in this conflict, which Hashemi said gives it an edge over Washington. Much of the region has been affected as Iran has launched strikes against US military assets and energy infrastructure in the countries hosting US assets. These include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Hashemi said Russia is “perfectly situated to shape a future new Middle East regional order” as “a major power that has direct diplomatic relations with all of the parties” in the region.

“The United States can’t make that claim because the United States has no relationship with Iran,” he said.

Putin has already acted as a channel with Washington, stating he relayed Iran’s views on ending the conflict to Trump in a phone call on October 9.

But Hashemi said he did not think “Trump is looking to Putin to help solve the Iran war”.

Trump’s Iran policy is shaped, he said, “first and foremost by Trump’s personal idiosyncrasies”, and then by his relationship with Israel, reflected among close advisers including Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations.

Still, with Trump “in a quagmire”, Hashemi added: “I suspect that there are intense discussions between Russia and the United States.”

That could come to a head at a possible three-way summit.

Last month, the Kremlin said Putin and Trump had discussed meeting China’s President Xi Jinping to talk about the Ukraine war, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen in November, but the White House has not confirmed whether Trump will attend.

If such a meeting on Ukraine goes ahead, Hashemi said he suspects “the Iran war will also be part of the discussion”, with Trump looking to China and Russia “to see whether there’s any room there to help him negotiate an end to the war”.

What happens next?

On Monday, Lavrov said Moscow expects Pezeshkian to attend the Gas Exporting Countries Forum summit in Moscow at the end of October.

Meanwhile, US and Iranian forces continue to fight for control of Hormuz ahead of the US midterm elections on November 3.

Trump has threatened to “soon finish the job” with Iran, but Araghchi responded by saying, “We have unfinished jobs, too.”