SUMMARY:

This article examines the fourteen-year period between 1722 and 1735, during which the Ottoman Empire swiftly occupied large territories in Safavid Iran but then was pressed to withdraw, with the Russian Empire playing a crucial role in this. Compared to the Ottoman military power, the Russian military capability was much weaker, especially in a region so remote from the main base of material and human resources and given the overstretched communications. Therefore, the conventional narrative ascribes the main role in the Ottoman retreat to the military genius of Nader Shah and Iranian military power, although empirical evidence does not support this conclusion. By placing the multifaceted Iranian conflict into the broader context of European international relations and diplomacy, the article demonstrates how developments in other theaters – along the Crimean Khanate or in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – factored into the Iranian situation and were in turn affected by it. Approaching Iran as part of the broader European or Eurasian political process, the article demonstrates how Russia’s strategic weakness in Iran was used as a powerful diplomatic weapon against the Ottoman Empire whose vulnerabilities were elsewhere. Withdrawing the troops from Iran after the overly ambitious incursion by Peter I, the post-Petrine Russian authorities presented this as a gesture of goodwill, buying Nader’s loyalty and occasionally providing him with military assistance. At the same time, an alliance with Austria prompted coordinated pressure on Ottoman European possessions. As parts of a single diplomatic strategy, the Iranian and Austrian alliances sustained an international reputation as the nascent Russian Empire at a time when its actual political and military capabilities were a far cry from its self-proclaimed status.