Russia-Iran: the "marriage of convenience" that sanctions failed to stop

Les faits d'abord. According to Courrier international, Russia continues to deepen its military cooperation with Iran, despite the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions. Moscow, still according to the site, takes care not to break with Washington. New documents, Courrier international writes, reveal the contours of this alliance, also fuelled by financial networks and trade exchanges on the rise. We know no more than that: the precise content of these documents, the volumes of weapons and the sums exchanged do not appear in the summary available to us. Caution, then, on the details.

That leaves the overall logic, and on that, our reading is clear. The headline speaks of a "marriage of reason". Fair enough. But what reason? That of two states each defending the interests of their ruling classes: oligarchs, military-industrial apparatuses, banks close to power. No love, no shared ideology. Contracts.

Sanctions were meant to isolate these two capitals. Instead they have mostly pushed them towards each other. That is the irony of the Western economic arsenal: one builds a wall, then is surprised that those walled in talk to one another. Sanctions, arms contracts, parallel financial circuits, trade blocs: all of it is, in the Leninist framework, the political shell of economic competition. Finance capital seeks outlets, raw materials, markets. When one closes, another opens, however opaque.

Cui bono? First the arms industries on both sides, and the intermediaries who pass money through the gaps. Then the states, which turn constraint into leverage. Moscow gains a partner, outlets, a piece on the board in its enlarged sphere of influence. Tehran gains a protector and a supplier. And who pays? The populations: Ukrainians on the front line, Iranians under sanctions, Russians under a war economy.

A telling detail: Russia keeps Washington onside. In other words, the alliance is not one camp against another; it is a card played in a negotiation. The great powers do not oppose each other on principle. They haggle. They divide up zones, influences and rents, and fight over each one's share. Lenin spoke of "rivalry for conquest" as the defining trait of great-power foreign policy; in 2026 it goes by the names of pipelines, drones and banks.

As for the "defence of the rules-based order", it rings hollow when the same capitals tolerate or practise the opposite according to their interest of the moment. Everyone brandishes the homeland, the law or security to cover the interests of "their" bourgeoisie.

The real question, the one the chancelleries avoid: who decides these alliances, and for whose benefit? Certainly not those who will bear the consequences. As long as the answer remains in the hands of states and markets, marriages of reason will continue. The funerals, for their part, will remain well attended.