Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, on Friday that Moscow continues to place a high priority on cooperation with Tehran and wishes to create a “new world order” in which the West and Israel no longer have a dominant position in global affairs.
Putin and Pezeshkian met on the sidelines of a forum in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. Pezeshkian said he hoped he and Putin could sign a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement during their next meeting at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia later in October. BRICS is an economic bloc cofounded by Russia, which Iran joined at the beginning of 2024.
“Moscow and Tehran actively cooperate with each other in the international arena and often agree on their assessments of world events,” Putin said at the Turkmenistan summit on Friday.
“This year, we are witnessing an increase in the volume of trade between the two countries and its good trend,” he said.
“From the economic and cultural point of view, our relations are getting stronger day by day,” Pezeshkian responded.
“The growing process of cooperation between Iran and Russia should be accelerated according to the will of the supreme leaders of the two countries and the need to strengthen these relations,” he said, seemingly forgetting that Russia technically does not have a “supreme leader.”
Pezeshkian complained about Israel’s highly successful campaign against Iran’s terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, Hamas and Hezbollah, and indicated he expects Russian sport against the “Zionist regime.”
“The Zionist regime does not respect any international legal and humanitarian framework, and the situation in the region is critical,” he said.
Al Jazeera News noted last week that Russia is depending on Iranian support for its invasion of Ukraine, especially Iranian drones, and it wants Iran to become a firm member of the new axis of tyranny Russia is building with China to counter the postwar U.S.-European order. However, Moscow has mixed feelings about Hezbollah, which is hellbent on creating a firestorm in the Middle East that Russia finds distracting.
Russia invested a great deal of effort in developing relations with Iran and Syria, whose dictator, Bashar Assad, barely survived a decade-long civil war with Russian assistance. A wider regional war triggered by Hezbollah attacking Israel could undo many of Russia’s gains, which is one reason why Russian forces in Syria have turned a blind eye to Israel bombing Hezbollah positions there.
Al Jazeera noted that Hezbollah’s political host organism, Lebanon, is an unprofitable quagmire Russia would rather avoid.
The Putin regime did give Hezbollah a little morale booster on Wednesday by saying the Lebanese terrorist organization “has not lost its chain of command and is demonstrating organization” despite devastating Israeli strikes.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. and U.K. of “hypocrisy” for supporting Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah despite civilian casualties after years of lecturing Russia about the civilians it has killed in Ukraine. The Russians were also angry about Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah in Syria.
“Once again, Israel has grossly violated the sovereignty of Syria by launching a missile attack on a multi-storey apartment building in a densely populated area of Damascus. It is outrageous that such actions have literally turned into a routine practice applied to Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Even as Putin and Pezeshkian were pledging to forge stronger ties, a high-ranking European Union (EU) official said on Friday that the first sanctions against Iran for transferring ballistic missiles to Russia could be coming next week.
