Iran & Russia: From Balance of Power to Identity Analysis

Various theoretical approaches in the field of international relations offerdifferent answers to the existing ambiguities and questions about whyrussian-iranian ties have expanded in the post-ussr era. while realistapproaches try to define the growth in russian-iranian cooperation within the framework of ties between major powers and their continuous efforts to establish balance of power, liberal approaches relate states' motives and aims of establishing such levels of relations to economic and material interests.here, a subject being somehow ignored by the two approaches is that both iran and russia, as far as identity developments are concerned, have passedthrough a situation in which they felt a need to reconstruct their identitiesafter the demise of the ussr. this article argues that during the aforementioned period, iran and russia,apart from meeting each other’s security needs or rare material interests -reliable foreign exchange for russia and embargoed technologies for iran-they were also a source for meeting their identity needs. the post-ussr era,and especially under vladimir putin, iran has served as the most importantarena providing russia with the possibility of acting like a major world power. russia’s behavior has been one of the major challenges to theinternational isolation of iran in recent years.