The Kremlin is confident that mass protests in Iran have peaked and that Tehran’s leadership has managed to crush domestic resistance to its rule, according to one of Russia’s leading Iran experts.
Nikita Smagin told Al Jazeera that the Russian embassy in Tehran has informed Moscow that the protests have subsided and the Kremlin can “breathe a sigh of relief.”
Protests over economic hardship erupted on December 28 and spread to hundreds of cities and towns across the country, where more than 90 million people are under sanctions.
Smagin, who fled Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said Iranian law enforcement likely suppressed them violently, but that the Russian government “doesn’t think there’s anything that threatens Iran from within.”
On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned “illegal pressure from Western countries” and accused unnamed “external forces” of trying to “destabilize and destroy” the Islamic Republic.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariya Zakharova said: “The notorious method of ‘color revolution’ is being used by specially trained and armed provocateurs to turn peaceful protests into cruel and wanton illegal acts, pogroms and murders of law enforcement officers and civilians, including children.”
She drew on the decades-old Kremlin mantra about “color revolutions” allegedly orchestrated and paid for by the West in the former Soviet states of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the early 2000s to topple Moscow-friendly authoritarian governments.
Zakharova said U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to intervene in Iranian protests was “categorically unacceptable,” adding that “a reduction in artificially induced protests” could lead to stability in Iran.
On Tuesday, President Trump urged the Iranians to “take over the institutions” and claimed that U.S. “help is on the way.”
On January 2, he wrote, “We are locked, loaded and ready to go,” and in June he called Khamenei an “easy target.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the protests, just as he ignored the January 3 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Moscow’s closest ally in Latin America.
Despite condemning Trump’s threats, the Russian government “can do little about it,” Smagin said.
For almost two weeks, Moscow remained silent about the protests until the Foreign Ministry’s rhetorical fireworks on Tuesday.
Smagin argued that the Kremlin was unsure whether Khamenei’s government would survive and that any harsh words would “prevent the restoration of relations with the new authorities.”
Russia’s position appears similar to its response to the overthrow of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
In October 2025, Syrian President Ahmed al-Shalah visited Moscow and promised to “respect” the agreements al-Assad had signed with Russia, including energy contracts and the presence of Russian air and naval bases.
For observers of Ukraine, Moscow’s blather about a “color revolution” is a well-worn cliché.
Kyiv-based analyst Vyacheslav Likhachev told Al Jazeera that Russia interprets “all protests against the dictatorship and mass rallies calling for democracy as the result of external intervention.”
Pro-Kremlin figures have since used the term to describe popular uprisings in other regions, such as the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s that toppled pro-Moscow leaders in Egypt and Libya.
Similarly, any protests within Russia are considered to be instigated by “foreign malicious actors,” Likhachev said.
Iran has accused foreign countries of being behind the unrest. A government-aligned Israeli television station claimed that “foreign agents” had given weapons to Iranian protesters.
Several analysts have told Al Jazeera in recent days that while the protesters have legitimate concerns, they believe Israel is playing a role in stirring up tensions.
Iranian state media said more than 100 security personnel were killed in the two weeks of unrest, but opposition activists say the death toll is much higher, including thousands of protesters. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the numbers. The internet was shut down in Iran for five days.
Russia is in no danger of ‘losing its reputation again’, former diplomat says
Relations between Russia and Iran over the centuries have not always been cordial.
The Russian tsar bit off vast swathes of Iranian territory that now comprises Russia’s North Caucasus and the former Soviet Union’s Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.
Communist Moscow sought to turn northern Iran into a “Soviet republic” in the early 1920s, briefly asserted independence for Iran’s Kurds, and sought control of Tehran’s oil reserves after World War II.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow became Tehran’s main international supporter, shielding it from UN resolutions and Western sanctions, building the Bushehr nuclear power plant, and supplying it with sophisticated weapons.
The latter included the “advanced” S-400 air defense system, but it was unable to repel Israeli and American drone and missile attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June last year.
In return, Tehran supported Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine by supplying drones, artillery shells, mortar mines, small glide bombs, and reportedly ballistic missiles.
However, military aid was not envisaged in the 20-year “strategic partnership” agreement that Russia and Iran signed a year ago. A former Russian diplomat says the Kremlin’s words about President Trump’s threat were not “sword-like.”
“Why rattle the sabers if you will only further damage your reputation?” Boris Bondarev, who quit the Foreign Ministry to protest the invasion of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.
Bondarev said Trump does not need Russia to agree to possible action in Iran, but is too afraid that the White House will lose interest in making numerous concessions on the Ukraine war.
“What does Russia have to do in response? Withdraw its troops from Ukraine and send them to[Iran]? Threaten President Trump to completely lose interest in Russia and the ‘deal’?” he asked rhetorically.
While Western sanctions continue to hobble Russia’s economy, average Russians are exhausted by deaths on the Ukrainian front, air raid warnings, airport closures, soaring prices, and rampant propaganda and repression.
“Iran? What Iran? We are busy trying to survive. My son is sad because (the popular online game) Roblox has been blocked. My husband has only enough income to pay the mortgage. Don’t bother me with questions about Iran,” Irina, a mother of two from Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains, told Al Jazeera.
She withheld her last name due to safety concerns.
However, prominent pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov optimistically predicted that Russia would help Iran “reform” after the protests end.
“The protests will be quelled, but the problems will remain. That is why Iran is waiting for reforms. It would be right if Russia could help Iran with advice on reforms, both political and political-technical advice,” Markov wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
