AP:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting his Iranian counterpart Friday for the signing of a broad pact between Moscow and Tehran.

The Kremlin says the “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreement between Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will take their cooperation to a new level.

The signing comes ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to broker peace in Ukraine and take a tougher stance on Iran.

What to know about the Russian-Iranian relationship:

Historic rivals become allies
Russia and Iran fought wars in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the Russian Empire capturing broad territories in the Caucasus and the Caspian region previously controlled by Persian rulers. In the early 20th century, Russian troops occupied large parts of northern Iran, but the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution ended their presence. In World War II, the Soviet Union and Britain invaded Iran, which still evokes painful memories in Tehran.

Tensions ran high in the Cold War, when Tehran was a U.S. ally under the Shah of Iran. After his ouster in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini castigated the U.S. as the “Great Satan,” and denounced the USSR as the “Lesser Satan.”

Russia-Iran ties warmed after the USSR’s demise in 1991. Moscow became an important trade partner and a key supplier of weapons and high technologies to Iran, which faced isolation from sweeping international sanctions.

Russia built Iran’s first nuclear power plant in the port of Bushehr that became operational in 2013. The next year, Moscow signed a contract to build two more nuclear reactors.

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