The Future of Iran-Russia Partnership in the Syrian Crisis

Given the importance of Iran-Russia partnership in supporting the Syrian government since the outbreak of the civil war in this country, this article has tried to study the goals and interests of Iran and Russia in the Syrian Crisis and to analyze their diverging and converging goals and interests in this issue. In this vein, the main question of the article is that which factors affect Iran-Russia partnership in Syria and to which direction will these factors direct the nature of partnership between the two sides? The main hypothesis of the article is that being in a common front in Syria does not mean that Iran and Syria are completely on the same page in this crisis and the two sides have major differences on issues such as the future of Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah and the future political structure of Syria. Therefore, it could be said that although the short-term goals guarantee the survival of the partnership in the short term, we can expect basic differences to arise between the two sides in the longer term. The article has been developed based on the explanatory method, using Neorealism as its theoretical framework.