First deputy chairman of the State Duma Defence Committee Aleksey Zhuravlev said that the strategic partnership agreement between Russia and Iran does not include any provision for direct military support. For that reason, according to him, Moscow will not send its troops to defend the Islamic Republic in the event of possible aggression from Washington.

He noted that Tehran is indeed a strategic ally of Moscow, but recalled that at the moment the documents were signed, it was the Iranian side that insisted on excluding any clause on direct military assistance, while Russia was already conducting the SVO.

Zhuravlev believes that US strikes on Iran are limited in scale and do not have a noticeable impact either on Russia’s position or on the global economy. He pointed out that in recent years Washington has attacked Iranian territory three times, yet this did not affect the dollar exchange rate or oil prices. In his view, such strikes should be classified as local conflicts that do not influence the global market.

He also drew attention to the fact that Tehran generates a fairly large volume of electricity, but almost all of it is consumed inside the country.

It is worth recalling that on 23 January US President Donald Trump said that a group of US Navy ships had been sent towards Iran «just in case» and expressed the view that, in the end, nothing would happen.