To the extent that ties between Moscow and Tehran could be characterized as a patron-client relationship, in the past Russia was clearly the patron and Iran the client. This seemed especially true about their arms trade: Russia provided weapons to Iran, not the other way round. As the war in Ukraine has dragged on though, Russia has reportedly become unable to replenish diminishing stocks of certain weapons requiring Western inputs that Moscow can no longer obtain due to international sanctions. As a result, Moscow has been buying weapons from Iran (and North Korea), and Russian forces have been launching hundreds of Iranian drones against Ukrainian targets. There have also been reports of Iranian personnel in Crimea helping to launch these weapons and getting killed in the process, as well as of plans to launch production of Iranian-designed drones in Russia and of Moscow’s plans to buy Iranian surface-to-surface missiles. Further, while Iran was only a minor trade partner for Russia in 2021 (see Table 2 below), Russian-Iranian trade is reported to have grown dramatically since the outbreak of the war.
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