Putin discusses energy cooperation, Syrian conflict with Iran’s Supreme Leader

Russian President Valdimir Putin has held talks with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran to discuss the conflict in Syria.

“The Americans and their followers on the issue of Syria are determined to realize the objectives, which they failed to realize militarily, in the political arena and at the negotiating table, which this attempt must be vigilantly and actively blocked”, Khamenei said.

Russian Federation had one month earlier launched a wave of airstrikes in support of Assad, whose Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has close ties to Iran, the Middle East’s main Shiite power.

Seeking to build new partnership after a deacde, Putin met for more than 90 minutes on Monday with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The Syrian crisis must and will be decided by political means”, Putin said during Monday’s meeting with his Turkmen counterpart, President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, on the sidelines of the gas summit. Iran is seen as a brake on those efforts because of its more staunchly pro-Assad position, which it wants the Kremlin to support…

If activities continue in line with current expectations, this will be a drop in the bucket where exchange between Iran and Russian Federation is concerned.

Speaking to state news agency Itar-Tass, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gave further details about the discussion between Putin and Khamenei. Iran’s alleged commitment to maintain Assad in power is linked to the leadership’s concern that no other ruling figure will enable Iran in maintaining its influence in western Syria, preserving access to Lebanon to arm its military proxy, Hezbollah, and keeping in place its front against Israel. Opening the summit on Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that his country “is ready to play a bigger role in the supply of gas” in a speech broadcast live on Iranian state television. Backed by Russian air strikes, hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived since late September to take part in a major ground offensive planned in western and northwestern Syria, their biggest deployment in the country to date.

The newly signed document, which the Russian government published yesterday, stipulates that Russia’s ban on supplying goods, materials and equipment no longer applies to the export of enriched uranium from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Assad’s fate was likely to dominate the agenda.

But as before, the parties continued to disagree on the future of Assad as that process unfolds, and at his meeting with Putin, Khamenei slammed the USA and its allies for wanting Assad to go. Both sides signed agreements in the energy, medical and transport sectors, including Russian plans to finance the building of two pipelines in Iran, although it is unclear if the billion in export deals Russia was hoping for have materialised.

The decision follows a landmark deal between six world powers and Tehran in July, under which Iran agreed long-term curbs on a nuclear programme that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb. Iran says it has sent advisers but no combat forces.