On Wednesday, the United States considered that Iran risks becoming a sort of “dependency” on Russia, in a warning that came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran, where he attended a Russian-Iranian-Turkish summit.
During the tripartite summit, which focused on the situation in Syria, Putin also discussed the dossier of the war in Ukraine with his Iranian counterparts Ibrahim Raisi and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In Tehran, Putin also met with the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called for stronger “long-term cooperation” between Iran and Russia, despite Tehran abstaining in a UN vote on a resolution condemning Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.
For his part, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “Now Iran has joined its fate with a small number of countries that initially held neutrality in order to ultimately support President Putin in his war against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
He added that such behavior can make the Islamic Republic “in relation to a country like Russia.”
And the United States recently released intelligence that Russian officials visited Iran at least twice this summer to test combat drones that Tehran intends to provide to the Russian army so it can counter Western equipment coming into Ukraine. In 2015, Iran and six major countries negotiated an agreement in Vienna on their nuclear program that allowed for the lifting of sanctions imposed on it in exchange for limiting its nuclear activities and ensuring the peace of its program.
And in April 2021, in Vienna, under the auspices of the European Union, indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington began, aimed at returning the United States to the agreement, and Iran – to the full implementation of its obligations under it.
The US representative also urged Tehran to establish “new economic relations with other countries of the world.”
