Tehran, Iran – Russia’s security chief held talks on the war in Ukraine and improving bilateral relations with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and senior security official Ali Shamkhani. Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met with the Iranian president in Tehran on Wednesday afternoon after meeting with Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). Raishi said Iran remains opposed to war as a fundamental policy, according to state media. “The development of the extent and expansion of the scale of the war is of concern to all countries,” he was quoted as saying. The Iranian president, however, said Tehran and Moscow were upgrading their relations to a “strategic” level, which he said was “the most decisive response to the sanctions and destabilization policy of the United States and its allies.” The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Tehran and Moscow over the war. Washington has also continued to build on its tough sanctions on Iran that have been in place since 2018, when it unilaterally abandoned the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Shamkhani told Patrushev on Wednesday that Iran wants the war to stop, according to Nournews, a source close to the SNSC. “Iran welcomes and supports any initiative that will lead to a ceasefire and peace between Russia and Ukraine based on dialogue and is ready to play a role in ending the war,” Shamkhani was quoted as saying. Patrushev reportedly criticized the role of Western media in “misleading public opinion about how the crisis in Ukraine started and its realities on the ground.” The meetings come days after Iran admitted for the first time that it had sold drones to Russia, but claimed a “limited” number had been sent months before the war began. Kyiv has accused Tehran of lying about arms supplies to Moscow. Ukraine faced a blackout after weeks of Russian attacks on its infrastructure, which it says were carried out with the help of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones and other types of unmanned aerial vehicles manufactured by Iran. On Wednesday, Shamkhani said Iran wants to rapidly improve energy, transport, agriculture, trade, banking and environmental ties with Moscow and use the capabilities of multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which it became an official member earlier. this year. Patrushev was also quoted as saying that the most important goal of his visit was to speed up the implementation of joint projects and strengthen cooperation. Speaking to reporters Wednesday after a cabinet meeting, Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Ouji said the Raishi government is monitoring a $40 billion energy deal signed with Russia’s Gazprom during President Vladimir Putin’s trip to Tehran on July. “We also have on the agenda the development of natural gas fields and natural gas export lines, in which we have signed contracts worth about $4 billion with Russia,” he said.
