Russia’s Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev met Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Tehran, July 3, 2026
The government made a great decision to nominate the Governor of Bihar Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd.) to represent the country at the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is an unusual choice to depute a retired general for the funeral of a revered religious figure but a thoughtful one in an attempt to inject verve into the bilateral relationship and restore the equilibrium in India’s West Asian policies.
Indeed, the funeral ceremony in Tehran is turning out to be an extraordinary event of a kind the world has never witnessed in a spontaneous outpouring of respect and sorrow. It carries immense political symbolism — tantamount to a denunciation of the US President Donald Trump and his accomplice Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the ghastly murder. As Shakespeare put it, ‘For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak.’
Such state funerals are international events where diplomacy tends to be in attendance. The event in Tehran is taking place against an extraordinary backdrop of power dynamic — both inside Iran and regionally as well as internationally.
From an Indian perspective, the utmost curiosity will be on the Indian general perchance coming face to face at some point with the Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir who has accompanied PM Shahbaz Sharif to Tehran. If at all such a happening were to occur, a few exchanges of pleasantries would follow, which might do some good eventually. At any rate, Gen. Hasnain’s first-hand impressions an intellectual, humanist and military mind will be insightful. One hopes he will pen his musings.
Pakistan is on a roll lately and Field Marshal Munir will be much sought after in Tehran. The New York Times and Washington Post carried reports, evidently based on high-level CIA briefing that Israel was hatching a plot to assassinate the speaker of Iran’s parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi but a tip-off by Americans thwarted the plot.
According to some other reports, however, it all really happened two months ago in the run-up to the historic face-to-face US-Iranian high level talks in Islamabad on April 11-12 attended by US Vice-President JD Vance, Ghalibaf and Araghchi. It seems the Pakistani intelligence agency uncovered the Israeli plot and tipped off the Americans and the plot got aborted. Evidently, the effusive words of gratitude heaped on the Pakistani authorities by Trump and Vance for their role in facilitating the talks with the Iranians can now be put in context. The timing of the American disclosure is intriguing.
Both China and Russia, who can be regarded as quasi-allies of Iran deputed senior officials to represent their governments. In particular, the presence of Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council [and former president and prime minister] takes the limelight. Medvedev is de facto holding the number 2 position in the Kremlin hierarchy. He is a long-time political associate of President Vladimir Putin.
Equally, Medvedev heads Russia’s Military-Industrial Commission, which is a powerful position overseeing the defence industry as a whole. Medvedev was accompanied by a team of top officials. This trip can be seen as a ‘working visit’.
On the eve of Medvedev’s visit, Russian sources disclosed that the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aviation Plant (also known as the Yuri Gagarin Aviation Plant located in thr remote eastern bank of the Amur River in Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East) has completed the production of the first batch of 20 Su-35 “Super Flanker” fighter aircraft ordered by Iran.
Sukhoi Su-35 is a formidable 4.5 generation, twin-engine, super-maneuverable air superiority fighter featuring advanced avionics, 3D thrust-vectoring engines, and the powerful N35 Irbis-E passive electronically scanned array radar with the rare ability to operate from short or improvised airfields, which makes it less dependent on major airbases and harder to neutralise.
Leaked Russian government documents published in late 2025 suggested that Iran had ordered 48 Su-35 fighters in total, per a defence deal with Iran two years earlier. Reportedly, Russia is expediting the deliveries to Iran that could begin in 2026.
Iran’s air force has long relied on ageing Western-made aircraft acquired before the 1979 revolution. Although Iran has developed one of the region’s strongest missile arsenals, its domestic aviation capabilities remain comparatively weak. Analysts say the arrival of Sukhoi Su-35 fighters could significantly strengthen Iran’s air power and expand its ability to conduct long-range operations.
There is no question that Medvedev’s trip to Tehran signals the Kremlin’s thinking to step up the military ties with Iran due to the force of circumstances at a sensitive juncture when a military confrontation between Russia and Nato is no longer a far-fetched scenario. These circumstances include:
- Nato’s expansion into the Baltic region;
- Washington’s direct participation once again in the proxy war in Ukraine, especially in escalating and intensifying the attacks deep inside Russia with long-range missiles;
- Finland and Lithuania clearing the deck for deployment of US nuclear weapons on Russia’s border regions;
- growing tensions in the Baltic Sea;
- threats to the security of Belarus, Russia’s close ally adjacent to its nuclear base in the enclave of Kaliningrad;
- repeated statements by European leaders urging citizens to prepare for a war with Russia; and,
- standstill in the US-Russia peace talks.
Significantly, Putin no longer differentiates between the US and its European allies as adversaries. In an unusually blunt warning, Putin last week stated that Russia will not be taken by surprise, as had happened when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
Equally, the security situation in the Black Sea region has dramatically changed. Daily attacks on Crimea are taking place and the road and the peninsula’s links with Russian hinterland are disrupted. Emergency has been declared. A massive military push by Russian forces towards Kiev is on the anvil, as the Kremlin seeks an all-out military victory and estimates that nothing short of a change of regime in Ukraine can bring the war to an end.
All in all, with Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan cozying up to Trump, plus the realignments in the Transcaucasian region in recent months — especially Armenia — Iran’s strategic importance for Russia has become critical. Russia simply cannot allow Iran’s capitulation. And in Tehran too, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed that the western nations were completely absent from the funeral ceremonies.