Fernando Moragón

🇮🇷🇷🇺|Rezaei Confirms It: Russian Gas Through Iran. The Pipeline Is the Answer to the Blockade, the Shortage, and the Strait. Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, stated: "There was discussion about building gas pipelines from Russia to Iran to address Iran's gas shortages and enable us to sell Russian gas to neighboring countries." The line is short. The architecture underneath it is not. Why Iran Needs Russian Gas When It Sits on the World's Second-Largest Reserves This is the question the Western press will not ask, because the answer embarrasses the sanctions regime. Iran holds roughly 17 per cent of the world's proven natural gas reserves second only to Russia. It shares the South Pars/North Dome field with Qatar, the largest single gas field on earth. And yet Iran has a gas shortage. The reason is not geology. It is capital and technology. Developing South Pars and the other fields requires LNG trains, cryogenic technology, compressors, turbines, and foreign investment. The US sanctions architecture blocks all of it. Iran can extract the gas, but it cannot liquefy it for export and it cannot build the processing capacity fast enough to meet domestic winter demand. The result is a paradox: a country with the second-largest reserves on earth imports gas from Turkmenistan via swap and cuts gas to power plants and industry in winter. Rezaei is naming the fix. The Pipeline Geometry A Russia-to-Iran gas pipeline has one viable route: along the Caspian coast. The corridor runs from Russia's Astrakhan region, through the Caspian, and into northern Iran via Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan. The existing infrastructure already points this way: ▪️The Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway 908 km, opened December 2014 runs from Uzen through Bereket and Etrek to Gorgan (36.84°N 54.43°E) in Iran. ▪️ The Iran-Turkmenistan gas swap enters at Sarakhs (36.53°N 61.16°E) and Dougoun, with Iranian officials stating the target is to raise swap capacity toward 10 billion cubic metres per year. ▪️ The Rasht-Astara railway link with Azerbaijan, signed with Russia in 2023, completes the western INSTC branch. A gas pipeline would follow the same corridor. Russia's gas enters Iran from the north. Iran consumes what it needs in its northern provinces and re-exports the rest to Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, and the Gulf through Iran's existing grid. The Re-Export Mechanism Iran already operates gas export pipelines to three neighbours: ▪️ Türkiye: the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline, capacity roughly 14 billion cubic metres per year. ▪️ Iraq: the Iran-Iraq pipeline to Baghdad and Basra. ▪️ Armenia: a smaller swap arrangement. A Russian gas pipeline into Iran would allow Iran to swap: take Russian gas in the north, consume it domestically, and deliver equivalent volumes to its export customers from its own southern fields. That is the same model as the Turkmen swap, Iran does not buy the gas outright, it takes custody and delivers replacements, earning a transit margin. The neighbours get gas. Russia gets a market. Iran gets revenue and a supply line that no naval blockade can touch. The Chokepoint Logic The Strait of Hormuz is where the US Navy has positioned itself for seventy years. The IRGC Navy is enforcing approved routes there. Eleven-plus tankers have burned in nine days. The insurers have repriced the Gulf. The shipowners are routing around Africa. LNG from Qatar and the UAE transits Hormuz. It is vulnerable to the same enforcement regime that is burning tankers. Pipeline gas does not transit Hormuz. It does not transit Bab el-Mandeb. It does not need a carrier group to protect it. The Russia-Iran pipeline is the second corridor that bypasses the chokepoint. The first is the INSTC rail line. The third is the Chabahar port connection to the Indian Ocean. Rezaei's statement is the gas version of the same strategy. The Meeting Behind It Rezaei did not announce this on television. He announced it after meeting Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, with Yuri Ushakov and GRU chief Igor Kostyukov in the room. The sequence was: ◾ 2 November: Putin and Rezaei hold a phone call on "strategic cooperation." ◾ 5 November: Rezaei meets Putin in the Kremlin with the GRU chief present. ◾5 November: Russia advises its citizens to avoid travelling to Iran. ◾ 6 November: Rezaei discloses the gas pipeline discussion. The pipeline is the economic architecture that the intelligence meeting was building. Russia provides the gas. Iran provides the transit corridor and the export market. Both states are sanctioned by the US, which means neither can be deterred by the threat of secondary sanctions on this transaction. The Benefit to Russia Russia's European gas market has collapsed. Nord Stream was sabotaged in September 2022. The EU has committed to ending Russian pipeline gas imports. Russia's revenues from European gas sales have fallen sharply. Russia needs new markets. Iran is the gateway to: ◾ Türkiye, a NATO member that has refused to fully align with the sanctions. ◾ Iraq, a US partner that still buys Iranian gas. ◾ Pakistan, which faces its own gas shortage. ◾ The Gulf, via Iran's grid. A pipeline into Iran converts Iran into Russia's re-export hub for the region. Russia gets paid. Iran gets transit fees and a domestic supply. The Contradiction Washington Cannot Answer The US sanctions architecture is designed to block the development of Iran's gas export capacity. It has done that. Iran cannot build LNG trains. The sanctions have not blocked pipeline gas from Russia. The US cannot sanction the pipeline without sanctioning Turkey, Iraq, or Pakistan for receiving the gas. The transaction runs through Iran's domestic grid, not through the dollar system. The pipeline is the sanctions regime's blind spot. It is gas that does not touch the Strait of Hormuz, does not touch the dollar, does not touch SWIFT, and does not require an LNG terminal. Washington spent decades blocking Iran's LNG. Moscow is now filling the gap with pipeline gas. The Bill A pipeline from Russia to Iran. A re-export mechanism to Turkey, Iraq, and Pakistan. A corridor that bypasses Hormuz, the dollar, and the LNG market. A Kremlin meeting with the GRU chief in the room. A phone call on 2 November. A disclosure on 6 November. Iran sits on the second-largest gas reserves on earth and could not use them because of sanctions. Russia has the largest reserves on earth and lost its European market. The pipeline connects the two problems into one solution. The gas does not need a carrier group. The gas does not need a tanker. The gas runs underground, from Russia to Iran to the neighbours, while the US Navy patrols a strait it cannot keep open.