In a first, Russia uses an Iran base for its Syria campaign

MOSCOW — Russia launched a fleet of bombers bound for Syria on Tuesday from an Iranian air base, becoming the first foreign military to operate from Iran's soil since at least World War II.

Besides enabling Moscow to bring more firepower to the Syrian conflict, analysts said the new arrangement would expand Moscow's political influence in the Middle East and speed the growing convergence between Moscow and Tehran.

From the air base, in Hamadan, northwest Iran, the Russian bombers destroyed ammunition dumps and a variety of targets linked to the Islamic State and other groups that had been used to support militants battling in Aleppo, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Historians and U.S. officials said Tuesday that the Iranian decision to let Russia base its planes and support operations in Iran — even temporarily — was a historic one.

"This didn't even happen under the shah," said John Limbert, a former U.S. foreign service officer stationed in Iran, referring to the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from 1941 to 1979.

In the shah's era there were U.S. military advisers who moved in and out of Iran, and a series of listening posts in the country's northeast where the military and U.S. intelligence agencies monitored the Soviet Union.

But the sense of sovereignty runs so deep in Iranian culture that U.S. efforts to have a bigger presence in such a strategic location were repeatedly rebuffed. Limbert speculated that Russia is paying handsomely for the privilege, and noted that for Iran today, the prospect of gaining revenue "can create a lot of flexibility."

The bombers — too big for the air base Russia established in Syria last September — had been flying missions from Russia, a trip that will now be 1,000 miles shorter, officials said. The main difference is that the planes will be able to carry heavier payloads, adding new muscle to the recently faltering Syrian effort in Aleppo.

Indeed, observers on the ground in Aleppo described a particularly heavy day of bombing there, even if they could not identify the bombers, with civilians bearing the brunt of the strikes. "The bombing today was intensive and massive," said Mohamed al-Ahmed, a radiologist in an Aleppo hospital reached via Viber, who said he had counted 28 victims so far.

Beyond any tactical advantages on the battlefield, launching Russian bombers from Iranian territory also seemed to be part of a grander plan by President Vladimir Putin to cobble together a coalition to fight in Syria with Russia at its center. The use of the Iranian base comes on the heels of Putin's recent détente with Turkey and amid Russian-American talks on cooperating more in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

"I think what Russia is trying to do is put together a broader coalition that goes beyond Russian-Iranian cooperation," said Andrey V. Kortunov, the director general of the Russian International Affairs Council. "They consider this operation as another bargaining chip in their negotiations with the West."

The new level of Russian-Iranian cooperation raises questions about whether the United States made a larger strategic error when, in choosing not to create "safe zones" or conduct major air operations over Syria, it left a window for the Russians to enter the war. President Barack Obama warned last October that Moscow would be sucked into a "quagmire" as it sought to prop up Syria's president, Bashar Assad.

Assad's position, dire when Russia entered the fray, was strengthened considerably, though his forces have faltered lately — one reason for basing Russia's bombers closer. But more important, the Russian entry has greatly limited U.S. options.

Now, any operation would have to be coordinated with Russia to avoid conflicts over airspace, and so far the Pentagon has been highly suspicious of such coordination. An effort by Secretary of State John Kerry to work out some kind of enhanced cooperation — both to fight the Islamic State and to provide humanitarian access to besieged cities — has largely failed.

On Monday, Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, said that Moscow and Washington were coming closer to an agreement on Syria that would let the two sides fight together. Moscow has felt pressure to reach a political settlement as the humanitarian situation has deteriorated in Aleppo and Syrian government forces have suffered a series of setbacks there and in Latakia.

The new arrangement seems to have brought Tehran and Moscow into greater agreement on Assad, who has never enjoyed absolute support from Russia. "The Iranians have been all in on Assad, and I think the Russians have now moved in that direction," said Cliff Kupchan, a specialist on Russia and Iran at the Eurasia Group, a political analysis firm in Washington.

The new flights help solidify Russia's presence in the Middle East, where its roster of allies has dwindled since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia "now views Iran as a powerful ally in the region and a stable source of income for its state industries," said Konstantin von Eggert, a political analyst and commentator on Dozhd, a Russian independent television channel. "Tehran is a rich anti-American regime in a strategic region important to U.S. interests. What could be better for Putin?"

It is not exactly clear how the Russian-Iranian agreement was negotiated, but there was no denying the historic, and somewhat ironic, nature of the agreement.

"The irony is that the revolutionaries denounced the shah as a foreign puppet," said Limbert, now a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. "But these guys have done something that the shah never did."