Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on Monday and, judging from a statement released by Khamenei’s office, the discussion was dominated by criticism of “the Americans”.
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“No one outside of Syria can and should impose on its people a few forms of government and who personally must govern it. This should only be decided by the Syrian people”, he said at a meeting with Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei, which was broadcast on the Rossiya 24 television channel on November 23.
Khamenei said other than the controversial nuclear agreement this summer, Iran would not negotiate with the United States on any issue. Russian warplanes had hit 472 targets in Syria in the past two days, and has destroyed 1,000 tankers of crude oil stolen by ISIL.
Ahead of the summit, Moscow formally eased an export ban on nuclear equipment and technology to Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran was seeking greater cooperation with Moscow in the energy, banking and transportation sectors. “The talks in Tehran surely concerned the need for stepping up the ground offensive against militant positions by the Syrian army and the Iranian commandoes with active support from the Russian air and space group”, Akhmetov told TASS.
Under the nuclear agreement, Iran will modify the uranium enrichment cascades in Fordow, a once-secret facility built inside of a mountain on an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base, in order to instead enrich non-fissile materials. Russia’s campaign of airstrikes in support of the Syrian regime that began September 30 has also drawn the countries closer strategically, while the United States and Europe are pushing for Assad’s ouster as part of any settlement to the war.
Hamid Reza Araqi, the managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company, has said that within four years of the lifting of sanctions, Iran hopes its gas exports will equal half the amount that Russian Federation supplied to the European Union in 2014.
Rouhani meanwhile announced that Iran and Russian Federation have agreed to strengthen their efforts against the common enemy and to further develop “cooperation on regional issues, in particular in the fight against terrorism”.
A long-delayed delivery of an advanced missile defence system, the S-300, is due from Russian Federation by the end of 2015.
Both Moscow and Tehran are backing Syria’s “President Bashar al Assad ” http://news.yahoo.com/russias-putin-arrives-tehran-100552859.html in contrast to Western powers, Turkey and Gulf Arab states.
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At the same time, he noted that bringing political aspect into the gas market and the applying unilateral and multilateral sanctions against the gas industry of the GECF countries is unacceptable.
