In other words, Moscow supported the agreement because Tehran wanted it.
However, if the Iran nuclear deal was viewed so fearfully in Russia, why did Moscow agree to the JCPOA? In 2015, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov reportedly told critics of the deal within the Russian foreign ministry that the JCPOA would have been achieved whether Moscow participated in the talks or not. Indeed, a US-Iran rapprochement seemed to be a far more dire scenario for Russian observers than the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Russian analysts also feared that Iran would have little need for Russia as its economic ties would be primarily with the West and China. Furthermore, I was told that Tehran might agree to a peace settlement for Syria that left no role for Moscow. This was something Moscow especially did not want to see happen right when its own intervention in Syria was in planning and then beginning in 2015. In private conversations with Russian observers at the time the JCPOA was being negotiated, I was told that, if a more general US-Iran detente occurred, Tehran might withdraw its forces from Syria and leave Russia to defend the Bashar al-Assad regime on its own. Moreover, with economic sanctions lifted on Tehran, Russian observers feared that increased Iranian petroleum exports would lower oil and natural gas prices, thus reducing the petroleum export income on which Moscow heavily depends. This may not have been a possibility that Western analysts even considered, but it is one that Russian analysts seriously anticipated. One concern was that the agreement would lead to a broader US-Iran rapprochement that would marginalize Russia and even undermine its role as a great power. This leak is consistent with reporting in 2015 that Moscow was very nervous that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would negatively affect Russia. The leaked audiotape of remarks made by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif did not just reveal friction within the Iranian political establishment over the nuclear accord, it also disclosed that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani-who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020-collaborated with Russia “to sabotage the nuclear deal.” According to Zarif, “Russia did not want the agreement to succeed… because it was not in Moscow’s interests for Iran to normalize relations with the West.” He said that Soleimani even traveled to Moscow in an attempt to undermine it. ApRussia secretly feared the Iran nuclear deal.
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