headlines: Iran Backs the War
articles: The endorsement went well beyond the much more cautious support offered by another key Russian ally, China. Khamenei repeated Putin’s claim that the West had left the Kremlin no choice but to act.
  
  It was a signal to the world that after Europe and the U.S. hit Russia with sanctions comparable to those that suffocated Iran’s economy for years, Moscow and Tehran were broadening their relationship into a more far-reaching partnership, my colleagues Anton Troianovski and Farnaz Fassihi write.
  
  “Russia and Iran still don’t trust one another, but now need each other more than ever,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group. “This is no longer a partnership of choice, but an alliance out of necessity.”
  
  It is also one in which Russia will hold most of the power, as Farnaz Fassihi, The Times’s U.N. correspondent and an expert on the Middle East, told us last week.