Had everything gone according to plan, the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would have spent the weekend visiting Brazil, Ecuador, and his close friends in Venezuela.  However following a carefully worded warning from Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and domestic political struggles – including a rare public rebuke from Ayatollah Khamenei, the trip was suddenly cancelled without explanation.  Given Russia’s role alongside Iran and China as one of the countries whose influence is fast growing in Latin America, how is the penetration of Iran into these areas seen by Moscow – as competitors or partners?

To discuss some of these questions regarding the Russo-Iranian relationship, Grigory Pasko conducted a Q&A with Pavel Salin, Head of Research for the Russian Center for Political Conjecture (read Pasko’s previous interview with Salin here).

Grigory Pasko: – The cooperation between Russia and Iran obviously has as its objective to restrict the influence of other large political blocs, geographically more remote, but pursuing their own interests in the given region. What other reasons can there be (are there) for the rapprochement of Russia and Iran?

Pavel Salin: – I do not see any additional strategic reasons – the above-indicated interest is defining. True, there do exist additional tactical interests. First, Iran is one of the informal leaders in the Muslim world, in that part of it which is most irreconcilably attuned towards the West and its system of values. So friendship with the Islamic Republic allows to count on its support in the Muslim world, moreover in a broad spectrum of questions – from the business-interests of concrete companies to geopolitics. And yet another banal reason – material interests. For example, the construction of nuclear power plants costs hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, and this is a serious sum even for the Russian budget of the times of the «corpulent 2000s» [as opposed to the popular Russian epithet of the «poor 1990s»–Trans.].