Khamenei Backs Moscow On Ukraine, Says Iran And Russia Must Cooperate
After Iranian leader Ali Khamenei met Russian President Putin Tuesday afternoon, Iran’s main news agency found the two moving closer with the Ukraine crisis.
After Iranian leader Ali Khamenei met Russian President Putin Tuesday afternoon, Iran’s main news agency found the two moving closer with the Ukraine crisis.
IRNA headlined its account of the meeting with a call, endorsed by both Khamenei and Putin, for United States forces to be driven out of north-east Syria, “east of the Euphrates [river]…an area rich in oil and agriculture,” where American troops, first deployed in 2015, have remained since 2018 to ‘secure’ Syria’s main oil-fields.
But perhaps a more notable part of IRNA’s report was Khamenei’s clearest expression yet of support for Russian action in Ukraine. While describing war as “brutal and hard,” Iran’s leader suggested that had Russia not “taken the initiative, the other side, with its own initiative would have created a war anyway.”
Iran’s leader cited the 2014 Ukraine “coup” – when protests overthrew Moscow-inclined Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and prompted Russia’s seizure of Crimea – and the expansion of Nato, which has expanded to take in 14 eastern European countries since 1999. “Nato is a dangerous creature,” Khamenei said, “[that] didn’t recognize any limits or borders. If you cannot stand up to them in Ukraine, then a little while later, with the excuse of Crimea, they would have started this war anyway.”
World events, Khamenei said, had increased the need for “reciprocal cooperation” between Iran and Russia, meaning that “many agreements and contracts, including in oil and gas…must be pursued…and become operational.” This was a “necessity…especially after western sanctions” against Russia over Ukraine, Iran’s leader said. Russian energy giant Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a $40-billion energy memorandum-of-understanding Tuesday morning.
The effect of US Middle East policies – including in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine – was becoming more limited, Khamenei said. The American presence in north-east Syria should end with their expulsion. President Ebrahim Raisi also referred to the US troop presence in Syria Tuesday to Iranian state television, arguing that it destabilized the country.
Cooperation between Moscow and Tehran would reach its “zenith” in the coming period, Khamenei said, stressing the need alongside other countries of continuing to expand trade away “step by step” from the dollar as the world “lost trust” in the US currency. Both Russia and China – whose dollarized bilateral trade fell below 50 percent in 2020 – are encouraging other countries to follow suit, including through groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which Iran joined last year.
US ‘deceitful’
“Americans were both bullies and deceitful,” Khamenei said, as had been shown by their role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, presumably in fostering nationalism in the Soviet republics.
Putin, IRNA reported, had said that while nobody wanted war, the West’s behavior had left the Kremlin “no choice but to react.” The Russian president said, according to IRNA, that some European countries had opposed talk of Ukraine joining Nato but had been cajoled by the US, revealing their lack of effective sovereignty.
The West did not consider Ukraine as a suitable candidate for NATO membership before the Russian invasion in February.
Putin described the US killing 2020 of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani “as another example of US evil.” He pointed out that sanctions against Russia over Ukraine had punished the west and others through higher energy prices and a food crisis.
Tehran opposes any plan, being considered in Ankara, for expanded Turkish military intervention in Syria aimed variously at bolstering Syrian rebels, allowing refugees to return, and weakening Kurdish groups linked to Kurdish rebels inside Turkey.
Khamenei stressed Iran accepted Erdogan’s hatred of “terrorist groups,” presumably a reference to PYD (Democratic Union Party), which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), active mainly in Turkey, and Pejak, which operates in Iranian Kurdistan. The Iranian leader said Tehran would cooperate with Turkey “against terrorism” and emphasized Tehran’s respect for Turkey’s security and borders.
But Khamenei also said that ‘terrorism’ in Syria was not limited to one group and suggested that an attack in north Syria would “benefit terrorists,” destabilize the region, and “impede Syria’s political actions.” Turkey has generally supported mainly Sunni rebels, including militant Islamist groups, against President Bashar al-Assad, who has been supported by both Iran and Russia.
Khamenei and Erdogan agreed on the importance, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA, of resolving differences through negotiations, citing the Astana process between Turkey, Iran and Russia, whose president Vladmir Putin arrives in Tehran for a three-way summit on Tuesday.
Both also stressed the importance of “Muslim unity,” with Khamenei describing the plight of the Palestinians as the most important issue for the “Islamic world.” Israel has a mixed relationship with Turkey, seen in Erdogan scaling back anti-Zionist rhetoric over the past two years and trade reaching around $7 billion in 2021, largely in Turkey’s favor.
IRNA noted Erdogan’s expressed opposition to unilateral sanctions – a reference to United States measures against Iran – and its commitment to Iran’s “legitimate expectations” from reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, currently subject to year-long talks between Tehran and world powers.
Boosting trade
Khamenei talked of boosting economic links in both quantity and quality, saying Erdogan and Raisi would address the issue in other meetings. US ‘maximum pressure sanctions’ after 2018, threatening punitive action against third parties dealing with Iran, saw bilateral trade drop by around two-thirds by 2020 from $10.7 billion in 2017.
While analysts question figures suggesting trade has now rebounded beyond 5.6 billion in 2021, Erdogan said in Tehran he believed it could reach $30 billion.
Aside from resolving difference over Syria, where Russia continues its military presence in support of Assad, the three-way summit in Tehran is set to address a possible safe corridor through Turkey of grain from Ukraine and Russia. Iran is one of many countries importing grain from Russia and facing steep increases in prices with the Ukraine crisis.
The visit also comes in the wake of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, where he committed Washington to avoid leaving a “vacuum” in the Middle East to be filled by Russia, China, and Iran. Saudi Arabian officials have rejected talk of a new “defensive alliance” against Iran, as Riyadh continues to look to Moscow to coordinate global oil supplies through Opec+, which meets early in August.