Russia’s Putin in Tehran on first visit in eight years

Speaking in a joint press conference following the 3rd summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Tehran on Monday, the Russian president said Tehran and Moscow must diversify their commodity trade while putting emphasis on the need to use national currencies for payments.

Speaking to state news agency Itar-Tass, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gave further details about the discussion between Putin and Khamenei.

USA officials’ ears were probably burning during a November 23 meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several leaders from a dozen gas producing countries – who together hold 67 percent of proven reserves – will be at Monday’s summit. In late September, as Russia said it would enter the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, Russia significantly increased its military support to President Bashar al-Assad, helping the beleaguered Syrian army with Russian air power. “Only the Syrian people should decide that”.

Elsewhere, Putin will meet the Jordanian monarch King Abdullah II today in Sochi, southern Russian Federation. Putin was in Tehran on Monday for talks with Iranian leaders expected to focus on the Syrian crisis and an global peace plan meant to end the conflict.

At a meeting in Vienna this month following deadly attacks in Paris and Beirut, world powers, including Russian Federation, the United States and countries from Europe and the Middle East agreed on a political process in Syria leading to elections within two years, but differences remained on key issues such as Assad’s fate.

A nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers earlier this deal has put Sunni-ruled Gulf monarchies on edge: they fear Tehran’s rapprochement with the West will allow it to pursue an expansionist agenda in the region. While it said it was targeting Islamic State militants, most of its airstrikes were against other groups fighting the Syrian government.

Under the nuclear agreement, Iran will modify the uranium enrichment cascades in Fordow, a once-secret facility built inside of a mountain on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base, in order to instead enrich non-fissile materials.

Iran has recently said it will withdraw legal claims against Russian Federation, when the first part of a contract on supply of S-300 missile defense systems is implemented.

“This must be prevented through wisdom and active interaction, ” Khamenei told Putin at the start of their meeting.

Putin’s visit – his first since 2007 – also reflects how the nuclear deal reached in July with the Obama administration has untied Russia’s hands to develop its relations with Tehran more publicly. Tehran is widely seen as taking a more rigid stance.