Analytical news site Oil Price previously said that under a 20-year deal between Iran and Russia, the country could control the sale of Iranian gas. In other words, according to one of the provisions of the 20-year agreement concluded with Russia, Tehran has accepted that Moscow regulates the gas market and determines at what price and to which countries Iran will sell gas.
On the third day of the war with Ukraine, Russia threatened to cut fuel supplies to Europe. At the same time, some analysts have argued that a nuclear deal with Iran could save Europe from a fuel crisis and allow it to recover from a budget deficit and restore its faltering economy. This statement was made at a time when it seems highly unlikely that Russia will easily lose its trump card to Europe.
On the other hand, some Western analysts have made new conjectures about Iran, saying that this country deliberately left the European gas market a few years ago in order to pave the way for Russia to pressure Iran. Europe in the energy field. And we would kind of witness that pressure with the invasion of Ukraine.
According to Mehran Emadi, Iran’s official economic adviser to the EU, in 2016 and before, Europe was considering investing in Iranian gas projects to buy gas there and reduce its dependence on Russia. The United States had also recognized that it was in Europe’s interest to issue licenses for Iranian gas exports, but suddenly the situation escalated to the point where the West declared that the Iran was unwilling to cooperate and was pursuing Russia’s energy policies.
Iran, whose economy is collapsing, is the second largest holder of natural gas in the world. But he does not extract his share of gas and does not sell it. The Iranian theocracy also does not pursue its national interests, but its own Islamist and fundamentalist interests. According to government expert Mehrdad Emadi, the Iranian people, at least half of whom live in absolute poverty, have been deprived of 23 billion dollars for lack of oil extraction.
A serious guess
Oil Price also explains that with the discovery of a new gas field, Iran is able to supply 20% of European gas. The Chalous gas field (in northern Iran) could pose a serious geopolitical threat to Russia’s dominant role in the European gas market. In other words, Russia has always tried to prevent Iranian gas from reaching Europe. Under no circumstances does it want Iran to enter the European energy market because if that were to happen, Russia’s authority in Europe would be compromised.
Russia’s threat to end its gas exports to Europe at the start of the conflict prompted Germany, at the time, to suspend new sanctions against Russia. It was then that a serious conjecture circulated among Europeans: that, perhaps a few years ago, Iran had “consciously” withdrawn from the European gas market in order to increase Moscow’s capacity to increase the pressure on Europe.
In this hypothesis, Iran certainly helped Moscow to paralyze Europe by energy means and Europe could not fail to react to the campaign of occupation of Ukraine. With this in mind, Iran, with the help of Russia, has practically turned the European winter into a frozen purgatory.
In recent days, Europe’s perspective on the Iranian issue has changed dramatically. Europe is now faced with a major question in the Iranian affair: was Iran a secret ally of Russia in the Ukrainian file? If the answer to this question is yes, then another question arises. What are the objectives of the main decision-maker in Tehran, the Supreme Guide, who wanted to have free rein to adopt any policy by bringing Raisi to the presidency and by standardizing his regime?
Previously, Europe viewed Iran as a country that not only destabilized the region, but also posed a threat through its regional influence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, through its missile and bombings and by the development of Islamist extremism and fundamentalism. From now on, an opinion wants that Iran is the sword of Moscow in the area.
Political cooperation and regional geopolitics
Cooperation between the Iranian and Russian regimes has led Arab countries to strike major deals with Russia to keep Moscow away from Tehran. During the aggression against Ukraine, they did not take a stand alongside Ukraine and other countries of the world to publicly condemn this aggression, which is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations.
The interests of the Supreme Leader
In a state of internal and international isolation, while Iranian society has become a powder keg, Khamenei is unable to solve his economic and internal problems and wants, with a “look to the East”, to feed his hostility and his opposition with the United States and the West. It therefore seeks to create a loophole in the P5+1 with the help of Russia so that, for example, the Iranian issue does not come before the Security Council or the trigger mechanism is not used against its regime.
Khamenei has always relied not on the interests of Iran, but on the interests of Islamism or its fundamentalists. And until the interests of the Iranian people are taken into account, reaching an agreement in which the regional abandonment or the construction of an atomic bomb would be ruled out forever remains a mirage, or at the very least a childish thought. .