Iran foreign minister meets with Putin in Russia

0:00LeRan's Foreign Minister has arrived in Moscow to meet with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. It comes as talks between Iran and the US on ending the war in the Middle East remain locked in a stalemate. Mark Katz is Professor Emeritus at George Mason University and is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East programmes and joins me now. What do we know about this visit and what the Iranian Foreign Minister is setting out to achieve by meeting with President Vladimir Putin? Well, they have met and and he Putin has apparently made a statement that, you know, Moscow will do everything to help them, but everything it can, but it's not clear that that means anything in addition to what it's already doing. It's certainly not been sending weapons. What we do seem to know is that they are providing targeting information, have provided targeting information for Iranian drone attacks and missile attacks in the Gulf and other Middle Eastern countries, but it doesn't seem to me

1:04that Putin is going to do anything more, others I think he would have said something specific. Does Russia genuinely want to end this war or is it in President Putin's best interest for it to continue? Well, I think he certainly benefits from the crisis continuing, the oil price rising, you know, Russia's income depends on oil exports and although the sell at a discount, the discount is now from a higher price. I also think that distracts American Western attention from the war in Ukraine. And, you know, it's obviously divided the West, a lot of Western governments are not very happy about President Trump joining these rallies in this attack. So I think that, you know, he's sitting pretty right now. What's the bilateral relationship like between Iran and Russia? Well, you know, they they have had a lot of differences over the past well, centuries actually, but they I think that basically they're united on essentially

2:10anti-American, anti-Western foreign policies. And so whatever differences they have, they pale compared to their joint commitment to seeing the U.S. in particular as an adversary. So, and so long as that's the case, you know, I think that despite Iranian disappointment that the Russians haven't been helping them as much as Tehran would like, not as much as have always been helping Russia, they will manage to get along. They basically they know how to work together. What was behind the Iranian foreign minister wanting to go and meet President Putin in the first place? You know, I think I think it just looks good. In other words, that, you know, that well, the Americans can't make a deal with the Americans that it just looks good to be seen odd nodding with Putin and that that in a course of Trump sees himself as a friend of Putin

3:14that seeing Putin as being supportive of Iran, that seems to be sort of a message to the Americans that at least the Iranians are trying to convey. Direct talks between the U.S. and Iran stalled last week, but Iran has held separate negotiations with Iran, Pakistan and now Russia. Is this a new approach from the Iranians that if it can't sit across the table with the Americans, it will go elsewhere? Well, of course, that's not clear what these other parties can do to make it deal. I just think it's all part of a theater of what the Iranians are doing that they're just they're showing that they have supposedly they have friends that, but obviously it's a question of who among these people, whether it's Pakistan, Oman or Russia can help them negotiate a deal with the U.S. and that we haven't seen so far.