August 19, 2016
Iran and Russia both announced Tuesday that Russian bombers are now using an air base in Iran near Hamadan to bomb targets in Syria.
It is the first time Russian troops have been based in Iran in 70 years—since 1946, when they were belatedly induced to leave the country after the occupation during World War II.
Tu-22M3 and Su-34 bombers flew from that base for the first time Tuesday to attack Islamic State and Nusra Front targets in Syria’s Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib provinces, the Russian Defense Ministry said in an e-mailed statement.
Shortly thereafter, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, announced: “Iranian-Russian cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Syria is a strategic one and we share our potential and our facilities in this field.”
He used the word “share,” implying that Iran was getting some access to Russian bases in return. But he gave no specifics and few believed that Russia had given Iran anything in return.
Iran’s constitution bans foreign countries from having military bases in Iran, but it doesn’t bar foreign militaries from using an Iranian base. The base at Hamadan, Shahid Nojeh Air Base, is huge with a 15,000-foot-long (4 1/2 kilometers) runway
It remains to be seen how the Iranian public will react. Iranian policy under the Shah had Iran allied with the United States. But Ayatollah Khomeini adopted “Neither East Nor West” as official policy after the revolution. Now Iran can be seen as allied with Moscow.
Neither announcement said why Iran had allowed the Russians to use the base or why Russia wanted to use the base. However, Adm. Vladimir Komo-yedov, a member of the Russian Duma or parliament, said the use of an Iranian base saved Russia a lot of money. “Tu-22 flights from Iran means less fuel and a bigger bomb load,” he said, when compared with flying the planes a much longer distance from Russia.
Russia has had fighter jets operating from Syria’s Hmeimeem base since last September. But that base doesn’t host much larger bomber aircraft. It wasn’t known if Hmeimeem is too small to handle the big bombers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the war in Syria with Iranian President Rohani when they met in Azerbaijan last week. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Iranian defense officials agreed on expanded military cooperation at talks in Moscow this month, according to the Izvestia daily. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif in Tehran Monday to discuss the Syrian conflict. All those talks presumably refined the new level of Russian-Iranian cooperation in Syria.
Russia asked Iran and Iraq last week to allow cruise missiles to pass through their airspace, the Interfax news service reported Monday, citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the matter. Russian warships in the Caspian Sea fired 26 cruise missiles over Iran and Iraq at targets in Syria in October, shortly after Putin ordered the start of the Russian military campaign in Syria. But that was a one-time arrangement widely seen as intended to show off Russian capabilities.
George Sabra, a Syrian opposition leader, told The Associated Press the airstrikes by huge bombers were intended to portray Moscow to the world as “a power with teeth.”
Rashad al-Kattan, a political and security risk analyst and a fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told Bloomberg News from London the Russians are using the Iranian base as a “symbolic gesture.” Russian and Iranian military cooperation shows the “cohesiveness of the Assad camp” in Syria and that they “won’t give up” on the Syrian president, he said.
Sami Nader, head of the Beirut-based Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, told Bloomberg the development is a gesture to Iran to show that the Russian rapprochement with Turkey “is not at the expense of Iran…. They do want to keep Iran in their camp for one single reason: they are fighting with Iranian soldiers and Iranian-backed groups on the ground,” he said.
Christopher S. Chivvis, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, told The Christian Science Monitor, “There is some military advantage to this, but there is obviously also a political dimension here. This can be seen as a political statement that demonstrates the strength and the depth of the Russian-Iranian bond…[and,] by extension, the Russian-Syrian-Iranian league.”
