iran and russia’s relations: convergence or divergence?

russia and iran, one with european background and slavic racial origins with the other one being of asian descent with non-slavic racial origins, are playing their roles in building regional and international order according to their respective capacities, capabilities. geopolitical and geostrategic developments and differences in proclaimed and practical approaches have historically changed the areas of conflict or interaction between the two countries, thus, raising questions about the reason behind instability of relations between iran and russia. to analyze changing relations between iran and russia, conceptual differences between these two political units should be taken into account. russia's approach to iran is mostly tactical and instrumental both on regional and bilateral levels. however, iran's approach to russia is idealistic, based on ideological rationality, and related to large-scale issues. as to main reason behind instability of iran-russia relations, one may refer to dominance of a geo-political over a geo-economic viewpoint. this means that the political aspect of relations between iran and russia has overshadowed economic aspects of those relations.