The Middle East and Iran in Russia’s Foreign Policy after the Ukraine War

The war in Ukraine and the prospect of continuing and even intensifying tensions in Russia’s relations with the West have strongly affected its foreign policy priorities. The Look East Strategy, which has historical roots in Russian foreign policy and has been more seriously pursued by the Kremlin since the second half of the 1990s and especially in the last decade, has become the dominant approach in Moscow’s foreign policy. In fact, after the war in Ukraine, Russia has no choice but to go east. In this situation, the question is how the war in Ukraine will affect Russian policy toward the Middle East and Iran. What changes will happen in Russia’s foreign policy regarding this region? It seems that parallel to the dominance of the Look East approach in Russia’s foreign policy, the Middle East will also find a more strategic position in the country’s foreign policy priorities. After the war in Ukraine, Russia will need to maintain and strengthen relations with the Middle East countries especially Iran much more than before in order to reduce the consequences of the political and economic pressures of the West. The methodology of this research is descriptive-analytical and the method of data collection is the library. In this regard, books, articles, documents, and Internet resources have been used to collect data.