In Iran, the media's negative view toward Russia is intensifying amid speculation that Moscow is bypassing Tehran in Syria.

Unfavorable Iranian views of the Kremlin go back to the early 1800s, when the Russian empire defeated the Iranian army in two consecutive wars, leading to the cession of major territories to Russia. Under two treaties between the two countries in 1813 and 1828, Iran ceded Dagestan, eastern Georgia, modern-day Armenia, the southern parts of current-day Azerbaijan, including Nakhchivan, and Igdir province, now part of Turkey.

Negative views toward Moscow persisted into the 20th century. In 1965, 14 years before the Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, slammed the Soviet Union along with Britain and the United States as enemies of Iran, even calling the Soviet Union filthier than the other two.

In the years after the revolution, anti-Moscow sentiment persisted as Iranians saw Russians arming Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had started a war with Iran, a deadly war that lasted eight years and killed many Iranians.