By Alexandra Sharp
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the growing partnership between Russia and Iran, Israeli politics surrounding the Gaza cease-fire deal, and a new prison sentence for Pakistan’s former prime minister.
World Brief will be off on Monday, Jan. 20, for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
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‘Vital, Sensitive, and Strategic’
From right, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sign a strategic partnership treaty during a ceremony following their talks at the Kremlin in Moscow on Jan. 17.Evgenia Novozhenina/AFP via Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a sweeping cooperation pact with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the Kremlin on Friday. Covering everything from military, to trade, to science, the strategic partnership aims to deepen bilateral ties in the face of Western sanctions.
“We do consider our relations with you as vital, sensitive, and strategic, and we are on this path strongly,” Pezeshkian told Putin on Friday to celebrate the treaty. This is the third such meeting between the two leaders since Pezeshkian took power last July.
Under the terms of the treaty, which is set to last for 20 years with automatic extensions of subsequent five-year periods, the two countries agree to cooperate across a wide range of areas, including trade, energy, finance, transportation, agriculture, culture, science, technology, health care, intelligence, counterterrorism, and defense. The agreement also states that if one of the parties is subjected to aggression, then the other will not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor that “would facilitate the continuation of the aggression.”
The deal’s signing comes just three days before the swearing in of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pledged a tougher stance on Iran and vowed to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the treaty’s timing as having any link with Trump’s inauguration.
Pezeshkian used the occasion to warn against the presence of outside forces in the Middle East, in an apparent allusion to U.S. involvement in the region. “They come from another side of the world to make chaos in the region,” Pezeshkian said. He stressed that countries should instead resolve their own problems, and he accused foreign troops of exacerbating tensions and destabilizing the region.
The treaty demonstrates that Iran is seeking a show of support, Nikita Smagin, who worked for Russian state media in Tehran before the invasion of Ukraine, told CNN. Smagin said the Iranians “are frightened by the Trump administration, they are frightened by Israel, they are frightened by the collapse of [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime], the collapse of Hezbollah.” Analysts suggest that blows to the proxies that are part of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance may have pushed Tehran closer into Moscow’s orbit.
Iran and Russia share a turbulent history; however, both countries reignited their close ties following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Moscow of signing a $1.7 billion deal with Tehran for its Shahed drones. Over the past three years, Iran has reportedly provided Russia with hundreds of drones to attack Kyiv with in exchange for Russia giving Iran advanced Su-35 fighter jets, which are subjected to several Western sanctions. The United States has also accused Iran of delivering ballistic missiles to Russia.
Moscow and Tehran have denied all of these accusations.
Last year, Iran also joined the so-called BRICS bloc in a further bolstering of Russia-Iran ties. And Pezeshkian was one of the few world leaders who attended the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024.
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What We’re Following
Cease-fire politics. The Israeli security cabinet voted on Friday to recommend that the government approve a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas. Israel’s full cabinet must now vote to accept the agreement.
However, last-minute snags on Thursday from some of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest allies could still derail its final approval. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has vowed to leave Netanyahu’s coalition if the cease-fire deal is passed, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to follow suit if Israel is not allowed to resume fighting after phase one’s six-week truce is up. Their departure would not necessarily force snap elections in Israel, but it would leave Netanyahu in a precarious political position at a time of heightened tensions.
If passed, the deal’s first phase, which also includes the gradual release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, would begin on Sunday. “I harbor no illusions,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said following the vote. “The deal will bring with it great challenges and painful, agonizing moments that we will need to overcome and face together.” Among those hurdles would be the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza to prepare the region for postwar reconstruction.
More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel—including at least 116 people from Israeli airstrikes that took place after the cease-fire deal was announced on Wednesday.
Behind bars. A Pakistani court sentenced imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, to 14 and seven years in prison, respectively, on Friday after finding them guilty of corruption. The couple was accused of accepting land as a gift from a real estate tycoon while Khan was in power, in exchange for using approximately $232 million of laundered money to pay the businessman’s court fines. Khan has denied the allegations.
The ruling is the longest valid jail sentence that the former prime minister has received since being arrested in August 2023. Khan faces more than 100 criminal cases, all of which he maintains are politically motivated and have since sparked violent nationwide protests.
In 2023, Khan was sentenced to three years in prison for not disclosing income obtained from selling state gifts, and last year, he received a 14-year prison term for selling state gifts and a 10-year prison term for leaking classified intelligence. Both of the 2024 sentences were suspended just months later.
TikTok mania. Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the phone on Friday to discuss recent developments surrounding the looming U.S. ban on TikTok, a popular social media app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The president-elect described the conversation as productive, with the two leaders also touching on fentanyl and trade relations. “It is my expectation that we will solve many problems together, and starting immediately,” Trump said.
Their conversation came as the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law on Friday that effectively bans the app in the United States, starting Sunday, unless ByteDance sells the platform to a U.S. company. This will be the first time that a U.S. law has ever shut down a popular social media app; TikTok has more than 170 million users in the United States.
It is unclear whether a U.S. company will take up the mantle and purchase TikTok. However, one man who appears to be truly in the running is Massachusetts billionaire Frank McCourt, who spoke with FP’s Rishi Iyengar for an interview this week to discuss the future of the app and the internet more broadly.
What in the World?
On Wednesday, why did hundreds of protesters gather in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo?
A. Rollbacks on nationwide fuel subsidies
B. The inauguration of President Daniel Chapo
C. Stricter registration regulations for small businesses
D. A proposed data-sharing deal with China
Odds and Ends
Seventeen days into 2025, and FP’s World Brief writer has finally begun one of her top new year’s resolutions: committing to Duolingo, a language-learning app. She’s not the only one. With the U.S. TikTok ban set to go into effect on Sunday, many users are flocking to China’s RedNote app and, in turn, brushing up on their Mandarin skills. According to Duolingo, interest in learning Mandarin in the United States has grown around 216 percent compared to this time last year, with a large spike seen just this past week.
And the Answer Is…
B. The inauguration of President Daniel Chapo
Opposition figures allege that Chapo won through vote-rigging and fraud, Tendai Marima wrote last October.
To take the rest of FP’s weekly international news quiz, click here, or sign up to be alerted when a new one is published.
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