AP Photo

Relations between Russia and Iran have developed in recent years through an underlying communality of geopolitical interests. It is based on the need to maintain stability in Central Asia and the Caucasus and the desire to forestall separatist tendencies in the two multiethnic countries. While Tehran has taken a wait-and-see attitude toward recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, during the actual conflict there it virtually backed Moscow. Moscow and Tehran are objectively interested in countering both the strengthened economic clout of China and the United States’ attempts to reroute the flow of goods from Central Asian countries to Asian markets via Afghanistan. 

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