Barack Obama

Can't believe I'm gonna use this reference here. But it also explains some of our 'friends' opinions on Putin and Syria.

There's a pact. They regard Syria falling the same as Iran and Russia falling.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/08/russ-a08.html

"While Iran, which has been isolated on all sides by the United States, is seeking to build an alliance with Russia to keep control of the situation in Syria and arm itself in preparation for a threatened attack by the US and Israel, the Kremlin is attempting to avoid a conflagration across the region. Although there are sharp differences within the Russian ruling elite over closer alliances with China and Iran, the Kremlin’s foreign policy is currently determined by the fear of an explosion of the military and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
Russian defence minister Dmitri Rogozin warned in January, “Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran be drawn into any sort of political or military difficulties, it would be a direct threat to Russia’s national security.”
Andrei Arashev, the deputy director of the influential think tank Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote at the end of June that the intervention of US imperialism in central Asia and the Middle East endangered the territorial integrity of Russia, China and Iran.
Arashev therefore appealed for a “strategic alliance” between Iran and Russia: “The destruction of Arab states in the immediate vicinity of Iran and on the distant periphery of Russia and China, the perspective of a military intervention and the collapse of the (Syrian) state and the fall of Syria into chaos will have a direct impact on the national security of our countries. To put it another way, in order to prevent combat on the streets of Iran and then on Russian streets, we must stand on the side of our ally Syria.”