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VOA \u2014 Iran\u2019s president visited Russia this week on a visit Iranian officials called a \u201cturning point\u201d in their relations, as officials also announced a planned joint naval exercise that includes China for later this week.<\/p>\nVOA \u2014 Iran\u2019s president visited Russia this week on a visit Iranian officials called a \u201cturning point\u201d in their relations, as officials also announced a planned joint naval exercise that includes China for later this week.<\/p>\n
The visit by President Ebrahim Raisi to Moscow comes amid rising tensions between Russia and Western countries over Moscow\u2019s troop buildup on Ukraine\u2019s border, broadly seen as preparation for a possible invasion. Russia claims it has no plans to invade.<\/p>\n
In a speech Thursday before Russia\u2019s parliament, the Duma, Raisi accused NATO of expanding into \u201cvarious geographical areas with new coverings that threaten the common interests of independent states.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the Kremlin on Wednesday, but despite the red-carpet welcome, there were no substantial country-to-country agreements announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe significance of the trip at the moment is still mostly symbolic,\u201d Alex Vatanka, director of the Middle East Institute\u2019s Iran Program, told VOA. \u201cThere’s talk of closer military cooperation. There’s talk of strategic cooperation in the energy sector. We’ve heard this before. Time will show if any tangible deals can be reached.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his only tweet about Raisi\u2019s trip to Russia, Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, was cryptic. \u201cThe presidents of the two countries agreed on a long-term roadmap,\u201d he wrote, without clarifying what the map was about or whether an agreement was signed.<\/p>\n
During Raisi\u2019s travels, Iranian state-run media reported planned joint naval exercises among Iranian, Russian and Chinese forces in the north of the Indian Ocean on Friday. Iran’s armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will take part in the drills, an Iranian military official said.<\/p>\n
Iran became a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in September 2021, thanks to strong Russian support.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>Uncertainty ahead of nuclear talks<\/strong><\/p>\n The Iranian president also gave assurances in remarks before Russian officials that his country was not seeking nuclear arms. \u201cWe are not looking for a nuclear weapon, and such weapons have no place in our defense strategy,\u201d Raisi told Russian lawmakers.<\/p>\n The United States and its allies accuse Iran of trying to make nuclear weapons and using terrorism to destabilize countries in the Middle East \u2013 charges Tehran rejects.<\/p>\n Iranian diplomats are in talks with U.S. and European counterparts to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump pulled out of, calling it \u201cone-sided and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n The talks are at a \u201cdecisive moment,\u201d Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday. The top U.S. diplomat warned that Washington and its allies might change tactics if a deal isn\u2019t reached in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n Speaking in Vienna on Thursday alongside Blinken, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock indicated that European nations had sought to ensure China and Russia also maintained pressure on Iran.<\/p>\n In Moscow, the Iranian president said his country was \u201cserious about reaching an agreement if the other parties are serious about lifting the sanctions effectively and operationally.\u201d<\/p>\n Opportunistic alliance?<\/strong><\/p>\n Russia and Iran both have critical disagreements with the U.S. on issues ranging from Iran\u2019s nuclear program and alleged backing of terrorist groups in the Middle East to Russia\u2019s security and strategic threats to NATO. The two countries have also cooperated in some areas, such as countering U.S. interests in Syria and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n But on other topics, divides include Iran\u2019s existential threats to Israel and Russia\u2019s official objection to Iran\u2019s proliferation of nuclear arms.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a matter of two nations which agree on politics or ideology to, somehow, form an alliance. It is basically an opportunistic alliance where both countries would really ignore their differences because of their hostility to the United States,\u201d Anthony Cordesman, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear to what extent Putin will go with Iran and against the West, experts say.<\/p>\n With the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, which shares a long border with Iran and three Central Asian republics, analysts say Moscow and Tehran will find a common agenda in countering drugs, refugees and terrorist groups like the Islamic State\u2019s Khorasan branch.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia and Iran will probably blame everything that will go wrong in Afghanistan on the U.S. policies. But the reality is now Afghanistan is on its own, and neighboring states like Russia and Iran have every reason to shape the internal dynamics of Afghanistan in a way that their actual interests are not jeopardized,\u201d said Vatanka of the Middle East Institute.<\/p>\n Before their seizure of power in Afghanistan, the Taliban signed an agreement with the U.S. that requires them to deny territory and support to any group that poses threats to the U.S. security and interests.<\/p>\n Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and RFE\/RL.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" VOA \u2014 Iran\u2019s president visited Russia this week on a visit Iranian officials called a \u201cturning point\u201d in their relations, as officials also announced a planned joint naval exercise that includes China for later this week. The visit by President Ebrahim Raisi to Moscow comes amid rising tensions between Russia and Western countries over Moscow\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101257,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101254\/revisions\/101257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/53E980EE-542C-449E-8F9F-768169EF841D_w650_r1_s.jpg\")
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