When Vladimir Putin visited Tehran two weeks ago, it was the first time a Russian president had set foot on Iranian soil since Joseph Stalin met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943. But Putin’s visit was much more than a pleasant reunion.

This jaunt was nothing less than an attempt by the Russian president to handicap American power in the Middle East and win the Kremlin much-needed leverage in its broader geopolitical struggle with Washington.

Four days before President Putin arrived in Tehran, he and his right-hand man, Sergei Ivanov, met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in Moscow. Peter Zeihan from Strafor wrote about the critical importance of these meetings, noting that they were about the “grand scope of U.S.-Russian relations” (October 16).

Long story short, those meetings were fruitless. But then, no sooner had the Rice posse been ushered from the Kremlin than Putin boarded his plane en route to Tehran. These meetings in Iran were also about the “grand scope of U.S.-Russian relations”—and they were abundantly fruitful.

President Putin’s first point of business was participation in a summit of Caspian Sea states, during which he achieved a measure of solidarity with leaders from Central Asia and the Caspian, including the heads of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Second, he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an effort to augment Russian-Iranian relations.

Putin made two significant announcements during his visit, both of which were designed to undermine U.S. foreign policy—particularly its military and geopolitical position in the Middle East. First, he made it clear that Russia would staunchly oppose any U.S. military action against Iran. Clearly a major reason for his visit was to demonstrate that Iran is not as isolated as the U.S. would hope.

Putin’s second announcement during the Caspian summit was especially noteworthy: that the Caspian state leaders had all agreed to bar the U.S. from using their territory to launch an attack on Iran.

Putin was quoted as telling Caspian leaders at the summit, “[W]e should not even think of using force in this region. We need to agree that using the territory of one Caspian Sea [state] in the event of aggression against another is impossible.”

These remarks go beyond a mere show of support for Iran. By warning Caspian states against helping American strategy, the Russian president “implicitly claimed primacy within the former Soviet Union, imposing solidarity among Caspian states” (Stratfor, October 17). Putin exploited these meetings to expand and secure the Kremlin’s sphere of influence within these former Soviet satellites, a string of strategically located states that are highly valued within American foreign policy. By establishing primacy in the Caspian, Stratfor continued, “Putin implicitly broadened the range of responses possible if the United States does attack Iran.”

Putin’s decision to jump into the fray of Iranian-American politics was calculated and cunning. These announcements didn’t simply augment Iran’s position; they were a direct assault on American foreign policy. That was the principal motive behind Putin’s actions: to handicap U.S. power and influence.

With this move, Russia has made America’s task of containing Iranian ambition much tougher and infinitely more complicated. Washington must now factor the Kremlin into its already convoluted foreign policy with Tehran.

It appears the Kremlin’s investment in Tehran is already earning dividends. On Monday, the International Herald Tribune cited European diplomats as saying that the United States “is prepared to offer concessions to Russia over the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty to try to persuade Moscow to soften its positions on Kosovo and Iran …” (October 29, emphasis mine).

Stratfor approached these rumors a little more dubiously, but nevertheless recognized that “[a]fter Putin’s visit to Iran, the United States saw itself being squeezed diplomatically and losing its options against Tehran” (October 31).

“By aligning with the Iranians,” Stratfor continued, “Russia has made itself the only practical conduit for pressuring Iran over its nuclear program. The United States needs that conduit, and also for the Russians to back away from Iran. To induce the Russians, the United States must make concessions in an area of fundamental interest to Russia—the regional conventional military balance.”

As strategically beneficial as shoring up relations with Iran and securing Russian supremacy in the Caspian was to Putin, it is the sum total that thrills him the most: Together those two announcements systematically weaken American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, and arm the Kremlin with greater leverage in its broader geopolitical struggle with the United States.

There’s no doubt that the Kremlin may be willing to throw Tehran under the bus, but what is it going to cost America to convince Russia to temper, or break its support of Iran? Talk about geopolitical leverage!

When Condoleezza Rice visited the Kremlin earlier this month, Peter Zeihan wrote, “Both Russia and the United States are attempting to rewire the security paradigms of key regions, with Washington taking aim at the Middle East and Russia more concerned about its former imperial territory” (October 16).

But the problem with these visions, noted Zeihan, is that they are “mutually incompatible.” It is impossible for one nation to achieve its vision without ruining the other’s ability to materialize its vision. More pointedly, the foreign-policy visions of Russia and America are on course to collide.

This is the geopolitical reality underpinning Putin’s trip to Tehran.

Russia and the United States are currently engaged in a gritty struggle to undermine each other’s geopolitical ambitions. Russia is alarmed by America’s massive military presence in the Middle East and growing footprint in Eastern Europe, including its proposed ballistic missile system.

And America is growing increasingly concerned that Putin’s Cold War-style resurrection of Russia is transforming the nation into a potentially deadly superpower, a cash-laden, oil-rich, geopolitically dominant, strategically well-positioned state helmed by a patently anti-American leader.

In the future, expect to see Russian and American interests collide further. These clashes will most likely unfold in the geographical regions where American and Russian strategies converge—predominantly the Middle East, the Caspian, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Kremlin will also continue to make a concerted effort to intertwine itself with states inside its sphere of influence, as well as with states that Washington has a vested interest in containing—which include Iran, Syria, Egypt, Venezuela and the states of Central Asia and the Caspian.

The better Russia’s relationships with these nations grow, the more the Kremlin will seek to exploit them to handicap America’s geopolitical power and presence. This was the geopolitical reality underpinning Putin’s recent trip to Tehran, and this will remain the geopolitical reality underpinning Russia’s broader foreign policy.

For the Russians, there will be a downside to their attempts to sideline America’s geopolitical power, but it will not come in the form of aggressive retaliation by Washington. Russia’s efforts to augment its geopolitical presence and expand its sphere of influence will not be taken lightly or casually in Europe. It will actually be a spark that ignites heads of state in Europe to more seriously consider bringing the Continent together as a European superpower, a geopolitical force with the power and influence to check Russian ambition.

Russia will continue to do its best to handicap U.S. foreign policy, and it will succeed. Watch this process, because the more aggressive and geopolitically dominant Russia becomes, the more pressure European nations, especially Germany, will feel to do something to counter this threat.