Russian-Iranian dialogue stepped up a gear in 2014, having cooled off during the tail end of Dmitry Medvedev’s 2008-12 presidency. Serious efforts have been made at the political level to give economic substance to the relationship, but with bilateral trade continuing to fall and few substantial new contracts, success is far from guaranteed. While the relationship is nowhere near the levels of co-operation seen between the Soviet Union and the Shah’s pre-revolution Iran in the 1970s, the intensity of the current dialogue is unprecedented in the history of modern Russia since 1991.