Earlier this month, Russia signed a new treaty on a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran. Covering multiple areas of cooperation, this agreement is set to underwrite Iran-Russia security ties for the next two decades and is the latest of Russia’s similar treaties with other partners. It follows the signing of a comparable deal with North Korea last June and the agreement on a mutual defense pact with Belarus in December.
The conclusion of these treaties in short succession begs several questions: Why the sudden influx of formal security-related agreements for Russia? Does this signal the formation of a new military coalition? What is to be made of it all? An examination of the agreements themselves is instructive and helps answer those questions with three key takeaways.
First, it is necessary to remember why governments formalize security agreements in the first place. One reason is to lock in security tradeoffs, the core premise being that a legal instrument will guarantee commitment to the negotiated provisions. The parties to those agreements may also be seeking to signal those commitments to external players, sometimes for a deterrent effect and other times to avoid the risk of misinterpretation of what the agreement entails.
The Kremlin signed its Treaty on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with North Korea in June 2024. This agreement called for deepening ties across all domains of cooperation but importantly included mutual defense commitments; in other words, it is a formal alliance pact. The world has seen how the two governments are exercising those commitments with North Korea’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
The agreement just signed between Iran and Russia is also a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement, but with three key differences from the North Korea deal. First, although it provides for nonaggression and consultation amid conflict, it does not include a formal defense commitment. Second, the agreement specifies a 20-year duration, whereas the North Korea deal did not indicate a termination date. Third, there was significantly more detail on the parameters of how Iran-Russia security cooperation would proceed. This specificity is important in signaling the boundaries of potential Iran-Russia ties both to its partners and adversaries alike.
The agreement with Belarus was fundamentally different from the other two. Rather than pursue a single comprehensive agreement, Presidents Aleksander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin agreed upon 10 supplemental agreements to existing legal arrangements this past December. The most important was a mutual defense agreement that formally incorporated a nuclear component.
So, what should observers take away from Russia’s recent flurry of security deals?
The first key takeaway is that the timing and format of the agreements were unusual for Russia. These were all treaty-level agreements concluded within about six months of each other. Until recently, the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin has preferred to play looser in its security commitments; for example, Putin downgraded the 1961 alliance treaty with North Korea to an amorphous “Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation” in 2000. The Kremlin also preferred to handle other security commitments via the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a group in which Belarus is a part and which Russia had invited Iran to join back in 2007. The fact that the Kremlin went ahead with the conclusion of these treaty-level agreements signals a policy shift.
The second key takeaway is that this policy shift extends from the Russia-Ukraine War. All the agreements involved countries directly supporting Russia’s war effort: Belarus has permitted the movement of Russian forces through its territory; Iranian Shahed suicide drones have plagued Ukrainian cities; and North Korea’s materiel and personnel support have continued to supplement Russia’s war effort. There would invariably be trade-offs for this cooperation, and the increased Russian dependency upon its partners forced a change in approach. With this window for policy change opened, the governments in Moscow, Minsk, Tehran, and Pyongyang took the opportunity to underwrite security trade-offs via formal deals.
Third, there were notable differences between the three agreements and no attempt to link any of them. Iran’s had no formal defense commitments; North Korea’s had a mutual defense commitment but no mention of nuclear weapons; Belarus’ had a mutual defense commitment with an explicit nuclear component. The tradeoffs may appear similar, but Iran’s deal shows wariness toward Russia despite the perceived necessity for cooperation. The North Korea agreement shows a desire to expand ties significantly while the policy window is open and leverage remains on Pyongyang’s side. The deal with Lukashenko reveals an authoritarian leader who is willing to trade some of his autonomy for guarantees of regime survival. At their core, these are not alliance commitments based on shared values or common interests beyond maximizing what can be gained through bilateral, transactional deals.
While it will be important to monitor the future trajectory of these relationships, these key takeaways help observers recognize the starting point that these agreements represent: Russia’s growing reliance on partners, transactional trade-offs, and the absence of cohesion among the lot. Ultimately, these treaties highlight Russia’s shifting security practice – one driven more by practical necessity than by strategic design.
