International Sanctions and the Iran/Russia Relations, 2006-2014

The Islamic Republic of Iran has, since the 2000s, stressed an eastward policy and the relations with Russia have been a major part of this policy, and this issue, especially in the years 2005 to 2014, has been more seriously pursued in the stated and practical policies. But the main matter in these relations is that, despite an eastward look in the Iranian foreign policy during those years, in practice the political ties were limited during that era followed by reduction of economic exchanges, and in this regard, the impact of the international sanctions, the sanctions approved by the UNSC which were supported by western and eastern countries, has been of great importance, and therefore, this question arises that how far and to what extent have the international sanctions impacted the reduction of Tehran-Moscow relations in the era of eastward policy? The pivotal idea of this paper is that “ the reduction of the two countries’ relations is more influenced by the international sanctions and these sanctions, due to Russia’s compliance with the international normative and security regimes resulted from international agreements and Russia’s approval of the UNSC resolutions  in sanctioning Iran, on one side, and the binding nature of these sanctions, on the other side, have severely reduced the relations of the two sides and made Iran’s eastward policy faced with challenges.” In this paper, for showing the relation of sanctions to the two countries’ ties, the method of codependence of variables has been used and for analyzing the reasons why Russia joined the sanctions resolutions of the UN against Iran, the method of Qualitative Analysis of the existing data in libraries, websites, and the views of some experts has been employed.