Putin meets Khamenei’s top adviser in Moscow for nuclear talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin today held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues, to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program.

Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran, but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the United States joined Israel’s massive bombing campaign on Iran in June.

Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear program,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says of the unannounced meeting.

Putin had expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilize the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear program,” he adds.

Separately, a German diplomatic source tells AFP that Britain, France and Germany are planning to hold fresh talks with Iran on its nuclear program in the coming days.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reports that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing an unnamed source.

Iran denies seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel said Iran had recently taken significant steps toward nuclear weaponization.