Theories abound.
I’m watching Russia and Iran for a growing alliance.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/russia-and-irans-growing-cooperation-hints-at-a-new-middle-east-75181
An excerpt:
A New Middle East Driven by Russia?
Above and beyond a circumstantial deepening of ties arising from the emergence of a new Middle East, Russian military presence in Syria has led these two countries into a new military alliance against Sunni jihadists. But the Russian military intervention in Syria also represents a challenge to Iranian military doctrine on regional security.
Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, which created a government centred around a religious power, Tehran has insisted on the need for Western Asian countries (the Iranian name for the Middle East) to reject all military interference from powers outside the region.
Iranian diplomats often make a distinction between so-called independent states, such as Iran, Russia and China, and those subservient to the United States, such as the oil-rich kingdoms of the Persian Gulf. Russian military intervention in Syria then constitutes a challenge to Iran, which opposes the international system dominated by major powers.
When Russia revealed in August 2016 that its armed forces had used the Noje airbase, just outside Hamadan in Iran, it provoked a controversy in the Islamic Republic as the country’s constitution prohibits the establishment of military bases on Iranian soil by foreign powers.
The chairman of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, specified that the Russian air force only used the base temporarily, in order to bomb “terrorists” in Syria.
Despite the inherent limits of an asymmetrical partnership between a world power and a regional one, the Iranian political elite must be given their due for transforming the old Russian enemy into a partner, a feat which the Iranian communists from the Tudeh party failed to achieve in the time between the end of the second world war and their exit from the Iranian political stage in 1983.
