This is the most valuable card the West has left to play against Russia

A great many messages have been flying around the world in the past week or so, courtesy of the leaders of the United States and Russia. But whereas the signals from the United States have, for the most part, been straightforward, those from Russia have hinted that something more complicated is going on.

With the US midterm elections already on the horizon, Joe Biden made his way to the Middle East on a journey that represented a reversion to old-style US foreign policy. After a period of disruption, caused in part by Donald Trump’s efforts to re-order US priorities abroad, but also by the attempts of Barack Obama and George W Bush to shift focus away from Europe and the Middle East and onto the Asia-Pacific and China, Mr Biden was yanking US policy back in many ways to olden times.

In his first year, Mr Biden followed more of Mr Trump’s foreign political directions than was often appreciated, including the entirely justifiable, but mishandled, withdrawal from Afghanistan and a low-key approach to the Russian intervention in Syria. But all that ended on 24 February with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The United States was soon back to committing to the defence of Europe through Nato. And Mr Biden’s trip to the Middle East – his first to the region since he became president – saw him reaffirming US support for Israel, laying to rest the rift with Saudi Arabia – after the 2018 killing of the exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – and reassuring the region of continuing US support.

He wanted in return an upping of oil production to stabilise the world oil market and reduce prices. George W Bush in his day might have hoped to scale back US involvement in the Middle East by ending its dependence on energy from the region – an underappreciated achievement of his presidency – but the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the international sanctions that followed have transformed the global energy picture.

The one novelty – and, incidentally, a point of continuity with Mr Trump – was the US president’s pioneering flight direct from Israel to Saudi Arabia, a by-product of the Abraham Accords that started a tentative thaw between Israel and the Gulf. Otherwise, the trip was a wholesale reversion to the past and a sign that US disengagement from the region was now at an end. Mr Biden’s tour was not just telling American voters that their president was doing everything expected of a US president in and around the Middle East, but spreading the word, including to Russia, that the United States was back in the region – if it had ever been away.

But even as Air Force One was leaving Washington, it was announced from Moscow that Vladimir Putin was off to Iran, and he touched down within a couple of days of Joe Biden’s return home.

How much can one foreign visit convey? Mr Putin’s trip to Iran contained a host of different messages. This was only his second foreign trip since the invasion of Ukraine, his first being to the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, where he attended a summit of Caspian Sea countries.

Both the timing and the destination were pointed. There is probably no other country in the world with which the US has worse relations than Iran – there have been no diplomatic relations since the Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis – and Russia knows that. And while Russia’s own relations with Iran have not run altogether smoothly – as an unpredictable neighbour, Tehran is treated warily by Moscow – they have reached an accommodation. This has tempered Iran’s international isolation and helped it out with energy and other shortages.

By going to Tehran, however, Mr Putin was not only presenting “the enemy of my enemy” as a friend, given that Russia sees the war in Ukraine as a “proxy war” being fought against it by the US and Nato. He was also reinforcing the idea of Russia as a regional presence. Mr Putin’s visit included meetings with Iran’s president and supreme leader, but the centrepiece was a three-way summit with Turkey’s president Erdogan, at which tensions between the three countries in Syria were part of the discussion, as well as possible arrangements for facilitating exports by sea of Ukraine’s grain.

Much – perhaps too much – has been made of Russia’s foreign policy turn to the East as a response to the West’s cold-shouldering of Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine. To an extent, Mr Putin has long sought to balance relations with West and East. One of his first foreign policy acts as president was to finalise a border agreement with China, and Russia has pursued energy deals with China since.

Rather than a sudden turn, there has been more of a progression. As Nato moved eastwards and the West imposed sanctions after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia was keen to demonstrate that it had alternatives to dealing with the West. The quest has surely become more urgent since the invasion of Ukraine.

But all might not be quite as it seems. For a start, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not left it as strapped for cash or as isolated diplomatically as the West had calculated. Energy sanctions have so far had the reverse effect on Russia’s finances, and although Moscow has received little actual support for its war, a preponderance of countries – including China, India and others in the Middle East and Africa – have not condemned Russia either. Many see the conflict as a regional matter and prefer – for a variety of reasons – to keep Russia onside.

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Nor, however, has Russia’s turn towards non-Western options been as complete as it is sometimes presented. In Tehran, Mr Putin was discussing, among other things, arrangements that might allow Ukraine to export its grain by sea. Why, in a war, you might ask, would Russia not use every weapon at its disposal and include Ukraine’s grain? And why did it not only not turn off the gas and oil supplies even before the EU started to impose sanctions, but has now – contrary to many expectations – restarted supplies through the NordStream 1 gas pipeline?

Let me hazard a few guesses. First, Russia is keeping a total gas-shut off as a later (winter) option, or a bargaining chip in a Ukraine end-game. Second, Russia is genuinely concerned about carrying the blame for a global food shortage – less perhaps from a humanitarian perspective than worries that the resulting unrest could affect countries that buy its energy, and because rotting grain in Ukraine could turn opinion more decisively against Russia in the UN.

Third, Russia knows that the war in Ukraine, by exposing its real military weakness, has already discredited its status as a superpower outside the West. And, fourth, Russia might indeed be turning to the East, but this is largely to show the West it has options. In fact, it is not ready to write off all prospects of restoring ties with the West. It still sees itself, and longs to be seen, as a European power. As the war in Ukraine grinds on, this could be the most valuable card the West has left to play.