As Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Moscow this week, the two sides pledged to develop cooperation on Syria, as well as bilateral economic ties. Putin hailed the trilateral Russian-Iranian-Turkish axis on Syria.
Russia’s and Iran’s participation in talks on Syria in the Kazakh capital Astana in February alongside Turkey as the guarantor of the ceasefire was a major contribution to a political settlement in Syria, Putin said. Moscow’s and Tehran’s joint efforts were instrumental in sustaining the ceasefire, he told Rouhani.
Russia and Iran remain allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but both have refrained from confrontational rhetoric against Assad’s opponents. Bilateral cooperation between Russia and Iran has “never been and will never be against any third country,” Rouhani said ahead of his visit to Moscow on March 27-28.
However, earlier this month cooperation between Moscow and Tehran in Syria was complicated by a diplomatic exchange between Russia and Israel. On March 16, Israeli jets hit targets in Syria associated with Iran’s ally Hezbollah, and Assad’s forces launched air-defense missiles.
Shortly afterward, the Israeli ambassador to Moscow was summoned by the Russian government over the incident. Therefore, Moscow’s partnership with the Islamic Republic, Assad and Hezbollah started adversely affecting Russia’s relationship with Israel.
Ahead of the talks between Putin and Rouhani, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced that Russia would be able to use Iranian military bases for air strikes in Syria on a “case-by-case basis.” Russia used Hamadan Airbase in Iran to launch attacks last year against militants in Syria. Iranian officials have argued that the Russian presence at the Hamadan base was temporary.
Incidentally, Iran this month tested an advanced S-300 air-defense system supplied by Russia. The S-300 is capable of tracking and taking out multiple targets at a range of up to 200 kilometers. Russia and Iran signed an US$800 million contract to supply the S-300 system in 2007, but Russia suspended the delivery in 2010 after strong opposition from the US and Israel. The delivery was completed after the lifting of sanctions against Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal.
Despite Western concerns, Moscow has long insisted it would sell weapons to any country that had not violated international regulations, including Iran. It has been reported that Tehran was interested in acquiring air-defense missiles, ground-to-ground missiles, fighter jets and armored infantry vehicles. It is also reportedly keen to buy anti-ship missile systems in order to control crucial sea routes in the Persian Gulf.
Rouhani’s trip to Moscow this week had an economic dimension as well. He and Putin agreed to continue cooperation in limiting oil output with the aim of stabilizing the global crude-oil market.
Russia and Iran clinched 14 deals, mainly memoranda of understanding, including memorandums of understanding on oil and gas cooperation, as well as transportation of nuclear materials, railways, trade, and electricity. The MOUs on gas cooperation was signed by Russia’s Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company.
Putin noted Russian loans totaling €2.2 billion (US$2.38 billion) to finance Iran’s thermopower and railway projects. He also mentioned the stable operation of the first block of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. Russia’s leader and Rouhani also discussed the construction of the second and third blocks of the plant.
Signed in January 1995, the US$1 billion Bushehr contract involved Russia’s supply of one VVER-1000 reactor, training of Iranian specialists and delivering nuclear fuel for the reactor.
In recent years, Iranian officials have suggested that Russia could become a partner in projects to build up to 20 nuclear power stations in Iran with a total capacity of 20,000 megawatts. However, these statements have been slow to materialize.
Moscow and Tehran also discussed matters of regional concern. Putin and Rouhani advocated an agreement on the division of the Caspian Sea among the littoral states ahead of the fifth Caspian summit, due in Astana later this year. Therefore, although cooperation on Syria appeared to remain a priority in ties between Russia and Iran, there were numerous other matters of important bilateral concern.
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It will be interesting to see if the US Deeper State’s revival of pro Sunni policies and backing of China’s CPEC/OBOR will shift India closer to Russia.
US General Commanding Central Command Votel accuses Russia of aiding Taliban in Afghnaistan:
Taliban are students of the Quran and the Hadiths educated in Saudi-Qatari-Brunei etc funded Sunni Mosques and Madrassas around the globe and trained to establish sharia on the rubble of civilization by heirs, successors and assign to the US-Pakistan made School of Guerrilla Warfare, Al Qaeda.
Now, the US has been cut off from Central Asia by Pakistani Khybari. The alternate route through Iran with the proposed Indian partnered Chabahar port is now dead in the water with the anti Iran rhetoric having been stoked up at the behest of the Deeper US State.
Pakistan now emerges along side North Korea as a buffer client State of China, another US rival. The US is resource strapped ever since Little Bush, and Dick Cheney burned three trillion dollars to deflect anger about the World Trade Center twin towers from the perpetrators, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan to Iraq and fill the purses of their cronies, businesses and personal interests. This action also erected 5000 fresh head stones at Arlington and drained the Veterans Administration with tens of thousands of war injured apart from the US stomach for war while exposing the unreliable nature of the US’ preferred Islamic boots on the ground. De Vos (ex Black Water of Bush-Cheney Iraq fame) with deep ties to Trump’s Oval Office is deploying his mercenaries to bases in Xinjiang as security Insurance for China’s CPEC-OBOR that includes the ethnic cleansing of Gilgit Baltistan (Sino-Pak occupied Indian territory) and Balochistan. This ensure that the US will be as firmly allied with forces hostile to US interests as has happened with every US Presidency beginning with Nixon.
Obama has raised the Second Cold War commenced by Clinton (the Lewinsky chap and not the Hilrious woman) to fever pitch by replacing the democratically elected corrupt regime in Ukraine with a CIA sponsored corrupt fascist regime in Ukraine in retaliation to Putin’s open letter in the New York Times on Syria. The Oval Office’s Ukrainian fascist brought down MH-17 with a Soviet Era BUK 35 in a USA fals flag operation to catalyze NATO sanctions against Russia. Russia has no further reason to play ball with a US where Trump has surrendered to the Deeper State (the US-NATO-Sunni Axis that was forged from Petro Dollars by Nixon, Yamani and Kissinger and which has run global public opinion, war, terror, and trade in contraband minerals, psychotropic substances, weapons, sex slave and so on from the Oval Office ever since).
Votel’s howl is a cry in the wilderness and will yield no more practical results than howls about the South China Sea, North Korea or Crimea. The US has shot itself in both feet and both hands. It must become a credible power, true to itself and the interests of the American people before it can play again and at that time the lie of the land will be very, very different thanks, in great measure to the US’ own acts of omission and commission engineered by the Deeper (US-NATO-Sunni Axis) State and crony capitalists. The US’ only hope is in nurturing allies. Here too, there will be uncharted reefs.
For example, I had predicted during the referendum that Brexiting with strengthen Britain’s economy. This will exacerbate Europe’s civilizational decadence and weaknesses splitting Europe between realists (aka Islamaphobes) and guilt driven masochists (i.e. Islamophiliacs). Countries like Germany will punish countries like Greece for non productivity while rewarding Islam for producing nothing but more Moslems speeding up the disintegration process. The Global power struggle will be between the US and China with Islam digesting NATO at its leisure under the cover of "religion" and with fecundity. Russia will consolidate further and undergo either a state driven or people driven purge to re emerge as a super power. Britain will give up all pretense of being more than a Gilbert and Sullivan military power with less negative consequences than Western Europe but will become an Islamic State sooner.. Time will tell.