Russia, Iran Officially Join Hands Against Western Sanctions

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the planned visits of the Russian president on Tuesday, adding that the agenda for Ebrahim Raisi's Moscow visit is not finalized yet but discussions will likely include the Gaza war. 

Although not very frequently held, Raisi’s meeting with Putin is not unexpected as Tehran and Moscow are partners in crime, particularly since Iran is supplying Russia with drones and missiles for the invasion of Ukraine. 

Putin’s outreach to the Arab states of the Persian Gulf aligns with his broader strategy to foster global alliances outside the Western sphere, aimed at projecting the failure of US and its allies’ attempts to isolate Russia through sanctions. Aligning with the two most powerful Persian Gulf states helps give Putin a degree of credibility more than the allegiance with Iran, as the world views Russia, like Iran, as a rogue state.

The visit comes after OPEC+ agreed to voluntary supply cuts totaling about 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), including an extension of existing Saudi and Russian voluntary cuts of 1.3 million bpd. Russia cooperates with all three countries in the OPEC+ group of oil producers, which last week announced new voluntary production cuts that were greeted skeptically by the oil market because of doubts as to whether they would be fully implemented. 

The visits by Putin and Raisi come as Russia is also hosting the littoral countries of the Caspian Sea, in a cooperation framework that Moscow says strengthens security in Eurasia. “The joint work of the Caspian countries makes a significant contribution to ensuring security, stability and sustainable development on the Eurasian continent,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a meeting with his Azerbaijani, Iranian, Kazakh and Turkmen counterparts in Moscow on Tuesday. 

Lavrov proposed the creation of “the Caspian Council -- a forum for cooperation and dialogue without any bureaucratic schemes,” emphasizing the need for enhanced international legal foundations and cooperation among Caspian countries. He expressed hope for further collaboration based on the outcomes of the upcoming Third Caspian Economic Forum in Tehran. 

The Russian foreign minister also highlighted that deepening practical cooperation across the region is also significant in a broader sense, namely in the context of the formation of a multipolar world order. Last month, hundreds of military leaders, lawmakers, diplomats and scholars convened in Canada’s 2023 Halifax International Security Forum to discuss the alignment of Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea as a substantial threat to the established world order. 

Leaders of these countries, including Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei, have repeatedly talked of a new global order not based on Western values.

It is a rare foreign visit for Putin who now has an ICC arrest warrant on his head for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. While it may limit his travels to most of the world, there remain some who still welcome him. 

Díaz-Canel, leading a high-ranking political-economic delegation, arrived in Tehran on Sunday. The visit comes at a critical time for both nations, with Cuba grappling with its most severe economic crisis since the disappearance of Soviet subsidies in the 1990s. The island nation is experiencing shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, while Iran is contending with a record depreciation of its currency and rampant inflation.

The meeting marks the first visit by a Cuban president to Iran since 2001 when Fidel Castro traveled to the Islamic Republic. In June, Raisi visited Havana as the final stop of a tour of "friendly countries" in Latin America, including Venezuela.

Iran, facing isolation in the international arena due to its perceived destabilizing actions, is working to strengthen ties with countries that share anti-Western perspectives.

Iran has strategically cultivated alliances with various Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, for over four decades. Simultaneously, it has sought to influence the region by disseminating its ideology through disinformation campaigns.

Cuba, enduring a long-standing US trade embargo since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro, is actively strengthening ties with key allies such as Russia and China, both of which are also facing US sanctions. The Cuban economy has been significantly affected by the US trade embargo.

As scrutiny deepens, the CBSA is investigating dual nationals with links to Tehran. Nine cases have already been forwarded to the Immigration and Refugee Board for a thorough assessment of their eligibility to enter Canada.

The stringent measures are a direct outcome of a policy implemented by the Liberal government last year, coinciding with widespread protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, in the custody of Iran's morality police.

Concerns about Canada serving as a safe haven for high-ranking Iranian officials were exacerbated after the identification of a former Tehran police chief at a gym near Toronto in 2021.

Under pressure from the opposition Conservatives and the Iranian-Canadian community, the Liberal government, under the leadership of then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino, designated the Islamic Republic of Iran as a "regime that has engaged in terrorism and systematic and gross human rights violations" under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in November 2022.

The designation resulted in the inadmissibility of tens of thousands of Iranian regime officials, including several from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to Canada.

As of November 20, 2023, the CBSA has reviewed around 17,800 visa applications under the IRPA designation, leading to 78 individuals being denied access to the country.

Based on referrals and tips, the CBSA has initiated investigations into 141 individuals with status in Canada, closing 38 cases. Ten individuals have been deemed inadmissible under the IRPA designation.

University students living in the diaspora or studying abroad are utilized as an asset to promote Shiite Islamism in Western democracies and recruited to transfer information and know-how to the um-ul-Qora (Islamic motherland).

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Ahmad Vaezi to oversee the Islamic students' organizations in Europe in 2020. As Khamenei’s trustee, he is the direct link between Khamenei’s office and the Islamic Students Associations in Europe. An ardent supporter of the Islamic Republic regime, writing in a letter to members of this union, he said "Try to follow your role model, the great leader of Islam, martyr Qasem Soleimani,” referring to the slain commander killed by the US in 2020. Responsible for the violent proxies across the Middle East, Soleimani has now become a symbolic figurehead for the Iranian regime spreading its influence and destruction not only across the Middle East but to young students in Europe. 

Until the 1979 revolution, Islamic student associations in the West mainly consisted of Iranian students and worked against the Pahlavi monarchy while most of them were receiving generous scholarships provided by the government.

After the revolution, these associations, due to the financial need for government resources and the desire of students to gain power and status through the new regime, were completely at the service of the ideology of the Islamic Republic and purged the opposition forces such as Marxists and MEK members. For about four decades, these associations start their annual gatherings with the messages of Khamenei, Iran’s leader.

While millions of Iranian university students pursue their education by getting loans, working, and using their hard-earned parents’ savings, these students and their family members have a luxury life in universities abroad. 

Due to this privilege, they are willing to perform several functions for the regime including spreading political propaganda, participating in anti-Israel Qods (Quds) rallies, and recruiting their professors and colleagues to steal information for bolstering military and technical knowledge in addition to establishing pseudo companies to help Iran’s military programs.

Members of the Islamic Students Association in Britain have met at least eight times with commanders and members of the IRGC since 2020. According to the Jewish Chronicle, the text of the commanders’ speeches has focused on anti-Semitism and anti-West sentiments. They also organized a technological conference held in Tehran in 2023 with invitees including faculty members living in the UK and people who are involved in tech companies in Iran, mostly working for the IRGC. 

History has shown that any member of a branch in the coalition of Islamic students associations who criticizes the government faces certain arrest on returning to Iran. An example is Saeed Razavi Faqih, a reformist, who was arrested after entering Iran in 1992 and sentenced to five years in prison and 148 lashes.

Later, they added another 3.5 years to his sentence in prison. Razavi Faqih, who was elected as the general secretary of this coalition, revealed that the associations receive money for their expenses from Khamenei's office through the leader's representatives in Europe. After 1992, reformists were purged from these associations.

Every few years, the members of these associations are invited to Iran, paid for by the government, to meet with Khamenei, groomed for eventually joining the government ranks. The last such meeting was on January 2, 2023, at the height of the student repression during the protests of the Women, Life, Freedom movement. Even amidst mass oppression of students in Iran, the associations still firmly aligned with the regime in Tehran.

Until the beginning of the1990s, members of these associations were mainly related to Shia clerics who were sent to Europe by government propaganda organizations for religious programs such as Muharram mourning and Ramadan ceremonies. In recent years, the connection between the members of these associations has reached the level of continuous communication with the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The overall path to support a more military-security based regime rather than a religious or hierocratic one is well underway. Khamenei has been successful in transforming the hardcore power of the regime into the hands of a small group of IRGC commanders and sideline the religious establishment and as each year's budget shows, that priority only strengthens year by year.

Nasser Kanaani said Monday that “the country has the freedom to utilize the funds based on its needs", in response to the approval of a bill in the US Congress aimed at blocking Iran's assets in Qatar.

Kanaani said, "The bill necessitates approval from the US Senate and the President of the United States to become operational. The US government, bound by its international commitments and agreements with Iran concerning the released financial resources involving third-party countries, is obligated and committed. We have secured necessary assurances in this regard."

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan measure titled the "No Funds for Iranian Terrorism Act." The measure aims to prevent Iran from accessing the $6 billion recently transferred by the US in a prisoner swap. Republicans pushed for the step in response to Iran's alleged involvement in the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, which triggered the worst conflict in Gaza since the Iran-backed group took control in 2007. 

The tentative agreement between the US and Iran in August led to the release of five detained Americans in Tehran and an undisclosed number of Iranians imprisoned in the US. The agreement involved the transfer of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets from banks in South Korea to Qatar. However, following the Hamas attack, the US and Qatar agreed to restrict Iran's access to the funds, stopping short of a complete refreeze.