Are nuclear issues at the heart of the Russia-Iran relationship?

Interview with Nicole Grajewsi

Nicole Grajewski has recently joined CERI as Assistant Professor. Her work examines Russia-Iran relations and the nuclear and military policies of both countries, with a particular focus on how doctrine, technology, and strategic culture shape nuclear decision-making and escalation dynamics. She answers our questions in the following interview. 

You have just joined CERI as an Assistant Professor. Can you tell us a little about your background and research experience?

I completed my PhD at the University of Oxford, where my dissertation examined the evolution of the Russia–Iran relationship from the late Cold War period to the present. The project was grounded in extensive primary-source research across Russian- and Persian-language materials, and it combined archival work, elite interviews, and field research. Prior to 2022, I spent significant time in Russia conducting interviews with former officials, military analysts, and experts, as well as working in archives. Much of this work ultimately formed the backbone of my book, Russia–Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine.
I spent three years at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, first as a pre-doctoral fellow and then as a post-doctoral researcher. During that period, I focused primarily on Russian and Iranian nuclear cooperation, including Russia’s role in Iran’s civilian nuclear programme and Moscow’s position in nuclear diplomacy surrounding the Iran nuclear deal. This work required close engagement with technical nuclear issues, arms control frameworks, and Russian strategic thinking about nonproliferation.
Most recently, I was a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. At Carnegie, my work increasingly centered on Russian nuclear strategy, escalation dynamics, and Iran’s evolving nuclear posture. Importantly, this role allowed me to bridge academic research and policy analysis, contributing to debates that were both theoretically grounded and directly relevant to policymakers.
Overall, I think of myself as someone whose work sits at the intersection of Russia, Iran, and broader nuclear issues. The core questions I work on are fairly consistent, but the way I approach and present them often depends on the audience and the outlet. Sometimes that means writing a conventional academic article that engages directly with theory and primary sources; other times it involves presenting similar ideas in a more applied way for policy or practitioner audiences.
Having moved between academic and policy settings has made me deeply value intellectual and academic freedom, particularly the space to pursue long-term research questions while also thinking seriously about how that work is communicated. It has also made me more attentive to the challenge of explaining complex issues in ways that are accessible without losing analytical rigor. I see this kind of movement between different forms of writing and engagement as an important part of how I work and how I think about scholarship.

Based on your research, how should we conceptualize the Russia–Iran relationship? Is it a strategic alliance in the classical sense? Which theoretical frameworks in international relations do you find most useful for capturing its nature?

In my book, I consciously avoid describing the Russia–Iran relationship as a strategic alliance in the classical sense. It is not an alliance akin to NATO: there is no mutual defense pledge, no integrated command structure, and no expectation of automatic military involvement if the other is attacked. But it is also deeper and more durable than a purely transactional “partnership of convenience.” The relationship has proven resilient across leadership changes, regional shocks, and real episodes of disagreement, suggesting we are dealing with something more structured than ad hoc coordination.
The way I conceptualize it is as a form of strategic alignment rooted in shared perceptions of vulnerability, both internal and external. For years, Moscow and Tehran have been bound by overlapping threat narratives: fears of Western pressure and containment, concerns about sanctions and isolation, and, crucially, regime security anxieties shaped by the specter of domestic upheaval. Those shared threat perceptions do not mechanically produce cooperation, but they create a common interpretive framework that makes cooperation easier to sustain and easier to reactivate during periods of crisis. This is why the relationship often looks dormant or pragmatic at times and then suddenly becomes highly operational at others: it is less about permanent commitments than about a durable sense of shared exposure to similar risks.
One important feature of this is a gradual, uneven process of institutionalization. Over time, Russia and Iran have developed a dense web of diplomatic, military, economic, and security-related channels that sustain cooperation even when political trust is limited. These mechanisms are often deliberately flexible and informal rather than codified, which gives both sides room to hedge while still enabling rapid coordination in moments of crisis. Institutionalization in this sense does not produce automatic commitments, but it lowers transaction costs, facilitates learning, and allows cooperation to scale quickly when shared threat perceptions become acute.
Theoretically, this is also why I am cautious about relying exclusively on traditional alliance theory or balance-of-power models to explain the relationship. Those frameworks are useful, but they tend to treat bilateral ties as relatively static responses to shifts in material power. The Russia–Iran relationship is far more dynamic. It evolves through interaction, shared operational experience, and learning, and it is shaped in important ways by domestic political concerns and regime security.

You emphasize the central role of regime insecurity and fears of domestic upheaval in consolidating the Moscow–Tehran partnership. How does this regime security logic reshape our understanding of the link between authoritarian domestic politics and foreign policy behaviour, particularly in the cases of Syria, Ukraine, and the Iranian nuclear issue?

Regime insecurity and fears of domestic upheaval have long been a central binding force in the Russia–Iran relationship, and one of my core arguments is that this shared concern has produced not only parallel behavior, but also processes of learning and adaptation between the two regimes. Rather than treating domestic politics and foreign policy as separate domains, this “regime security” logic shows how external cooperation becomes a tool for managing internal vulnerability.
We can see this dynamic very clearly in the current wave of protests in Iran. Over time, Russia and Iran have exchanged experiences, practices, and technologies related to protest management, information control, and coercive stabilization. In my work, I show how this exchange has become increasingly systematic, particularly as both regimes have come to view domestic unrest not as a purely internal matter, but as something shaped by transnational information flows and external pressure. In this sense, regime security cooperation is not an ancillary aspect of the bilateral relationship; it is one of its most consequential dimensions.
Syria, however, is where this dynamic became operationalized at scale. Neither Russia nor Iran was willing to accept the collapse of the Assad regime in 2011, especially in the wake of the collapse of the dictatorial regime in Libya. But beyond the initial decision to intervene, what proved most consequential were the networks that emerged through sustained joint operations. Syria required day-to-day coordination between Russian and Iranian military forces, intelligence services, logistics chains, and local partners. This produced a degree of interoperability and mutual familiarity that neither side had previously possessed.
Those networks mattered well beyond the Syrian theater. When Russia later found itself in need of unmanned aerial vehicles in Ukraine, the speed with which it turned to Iran and integrated Iranian systems reflected not just necessity but also preexisting operational relationships. Personnel knew one another, channels already existed, and there was prior experience adapting Iranian capabilities to Russian operational requirements. In that sense, Syria functioned as an incubator for military–technical cooperation that could be repurposed under very different conditions.

And the nuclear issue?

The nuclear issue follows a different logic. Russia has played perhaps the most important external role in Iran’s civilian nuclear program, particularly through the Bushehr nuclear power plant. For much of the post–Cold War period, Moscow sought to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons while using nuclear cooperation as a source of leverage—especially through fuel supply arrangements and its role in diplomacy surrounding the Iranian nuclear file. This allowed Russia to present itself as a responsible actor within the non-proliferation regime while retaining influence over Tehran.
What changed after the war in Ukraine was not the technical foundation of that cooperation, but Russia’s political posture. As relations with the West deteriorated, Moscow became less willing to act as a constraining intermediary on Iran’s nuclear program and more inclined to provide diplomatic cover, including by rejecting the applicability of snapback sanctions. The more troubling implication of this shift is that, over time, Russia may also become more willing to relax long-standing red lines around sensitive forms of cooperation.

Increased military cooperation since 2022, particularly in drones and missiles, appears to be generating unprecedented dynamics in learning and technology dissemination. How can these transfers be analysed?

I think these transfers are best understood as part of an adaptive process that has gradually transformed the relationship from one characterized by asymmetry into something closer to mutual dependence. Since 2022, military cooperation has not only intensified but has begun to generate forms of learning and adjustment on both sides that are qualitatively different from earlier phases of the relationship.
On the Iranian side, the use of drones and missile-related systems in Ukraine provides sustained exposure to a high-end operational environment, including Western-supplied air defenses and electronic warfare. This produces concrete feedback on performance, survivability, and countermeasures that would be difficult to obtain otherwise. 
On the Russian side, integrating Iranian systems has required adjustments in doctrine, logistics, targeting practices, and industrial processes. Over time, this kind of interaction creates learning that is embedded in organizations rather than confined to individual platforms.
What makes this dynamic particularly significant is that it unfolds within institutional networks forged earlier, especially in Syria. Those networks allow learning to circulate quickly and informally across military, intelligence, and procurement channels. As a result, cooperation does not remain limited to discrete transfers; it becomes iterative. Systems are adapted, production is adjusted, and expectations about what each side can provide begin to change.
This is where the relationship has shifted in more consequential ways. As Russia’s war in Ukraine has dragged on and its isolation from Western markets and technology has deepened, Moscow’s incentives have changed. Russia has become more reliant on Iran, not just as a supplier of specific systems, but as a partner capable of sustaining military cooperation under sanctions. That reliance, in turn, increases the likelihood that Russia will become more willing to share capabilities it previously treated with greater caution, such as those related to missile and weaponization technologies.
In that sense, learning and adaptation are not simply technical processes; they are political ones. As cooperation becomes routinized and necessity-driven, earlier red lines erode. The relationship moves away from a model in which Russia carefully calibrates what it provides Iran toward one in which maintaining the partnership itself becomes strategically valuable. That shift matters because it lowers barriers to more advanced forms of cooperation over time, even if those steps occur incrementally rather than through a single dramatic decision.
The broader implication is that this is no longer just a case of transactional exchange. Ongoing adaptation and reciprocal dependence have begun to lock both sides into a pattern of cooperation that is harder to reverse and harder to regulate. That is what makes the post-2022 phase distinct—and why its consequences are likely to extend beyond drones and missiles into more sensitive domains in the future.

Are you currently participating in collective projects here at CERI and elsewhere? What are your projects for the near future?

Right now, I’m working on a set of projects that are connected but not all centered on the Russia–Iran relationship itself. At this stage, I’m more interested in using Russia and Iran as distinct cases to ask broader questions about nuclear strategy, deterrence, and military adaptation. There is only so much analytical leverage you can get from studying a single bilateral relationship, and part of what I’m doing now is stepping back to think more systematically about how each case fits into larger debates.
One cluster of projects focuses on Russian nuclear strategy. I’m working on what will likely be my next book, which traces the evolution of Soviet and Russian thinking about limited nuclear war, escalation management, and the integration of conventional and nuclear forces for warfighting. The project draws heavily on Russian-language military journals, doctrinal texts, and internal debates, and examines how concepts such as limited nuclear use, demonstrative strikes, and escalation control have evolved over time. I also have several working papers on Russian views of trilateral arms racing, particularly how Moscow understands US and Chinese nuclear modernization and how concerns about missile defense, precision strike, and space-based systems shape Russian thinking about deterrence and vulnerability.
The second cluster focuses on Iran. Part of my work here examines how Iran has conceptualized conventional deterrence, especially through its missile forces, and how that thinking has changed as Iran has faced different regional threats and military constraints. I’m interested in how missiles function not just as weapons, but as political tools—how they are tied to ideas about resolve, survivability, and signaling in Iran’s strategic culture. I’m also working on a larger collaborative project with Ori Rabinowitz at Stanford on deterrence failure in the Middle East, which examines cases to understand why deterrence breaks down, how escalation unfolds in regional conflicts, and what these dynamics reveal about the limits of existing deterrence theory. This is especially important since 7 October and the 12 Day-War. 
I continue to work on Russia–Iran relations, particularly the projects I set aside or haven’t completed. One project I’m finishing is a journal article on Russian thinking about civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran, based on interviews I conducted with former Russian officials who were directly involved in those decisions. That article examines how Russian policymakers understood the risks and benefits of nuclear cooperation with Iran, how they thought about leverage and nonproliferation, and how those views shifted over time.
Overall, my research agenda has shifted somewhat over time, which I think is both natural and healthy. While the specific questions I work on have evolved, I remain closely anchored to Russia and Iran because the empirical foundation of my research is qualitative and language-based. Much of my work relies on Russian- and Persian-language materials, interviews, and archival sources, and that necessarily shapes the cases I am best positioned to work on.
At the same time, I continue to engage with policy-relevant research, and I find this an especially interesting moment to be working on nuclear issues in Europe. The erosion of arms control, the return of great-power competition, and the growing interaction between nuclear, conventional, and emerging technologies have made questions of deterrence and escalation newly salient. Being based in Europe, and at CERI in particular, provides a valuable vantage point for thinking about these dynamics in a way that bridges academic research and policy debates. It’s a dynamic time to be doing this kind of work, and I’m looking forward to seeing how these projects develop in conversation with colleagues and students here.

Interview by Miriam Périer, CERI.