Russia, Iran align interests during Tehran talks this week, Kremlin says

Russia and Iran remain aligned on Tehran’s goals for its domestic nuclear program, the Russian foreign ministry said this week.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Iran’s leadership in Tehran on Tuesday for a series of talks on global and regional conflicts as well as Iran’s nuclear program. Russia’s Foreign Ministry asserted the talks were productive and reaffirmed the two nation’s alignment.

“Positions were aligned on the situation around the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that President Trump repudiated in his first four-year term in office in 2018,” the ministry said in a statement.

In meetings with both Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Mr. Lavrov also discussed the status of Syria, Afghanistan and Israel.

The multinational Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015, lifted some sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on the nation’s nuclear capabilities. Since the U.S. left the accord, nuclear watchdogs have sounded the alarm about the rate of Iran’s nuclear enrichment, asserting that the Islamic Republic is moving at a pace far beyond what is necessary for domestic civilian energy needs. The deal was signed by China, France, Germany Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.

Iran has long denied claims that it is developing nuclear weapons, saying that its nuclear program is only for commercial purposes.

But The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog agency contends in its latest analysis that Iran has accelerated its production of near weapons-grade uranium.

Iran’s growing supply of enriched uranium is a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90% needed to make a nuclear bomb.

“The significantly increased production and accumulation of highly enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,” the U.N. confidential report stated, according to the AP account.