Putin and Iranian President to discuss nuclear deal and current agenda in Moscow

19 January 2022

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Wednesday.


Raisi officially took office as president on August 5 last year, winning more than 60% of the vote in the election.


The upcoming visit to Russia will be his first in office, and Raisi and Putin have communicated by phone several times over the past months.


Agenda of the talks


Earlier, the Kremlin press service reported that the presidents plan to discuss a full range of bilateral cooperation issues, including the implementation of joint projects in the trade and economic sphere, as well as current international and regional topics. Special attention will be paid to the problems of implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program (JCPOA).


According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Putin and Raisi will conduct a general "inventory" of the bilateral agenda during the meeting. Among other topics, they will discuss the situation in the Persian Gulf and joint work in the UN and other international organizations.


In turn, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Raisi's upcoming visit to Russia is a "continuation of Tehran's balanced foreign policy course". Kambiz Mirkarimi, deputy head of the joint Iranian-Russian Chamber of Commerce, added that the visit "will include negotiations at the highest level to conclude agreements in the fields of trade and finance."


It was reported that before the start of the visit, the president of the republic consulted with Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign affairs adviser to Iran's leader and spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.


The day after his meeting with Putin, on January 20, Raisi will speak at a State Duma meeting. He will also visit the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and meet with clergy from various Russian regions, according to a TASS source in the Russian Religious Board of Muslims.

 

 

Settlement of Iran's nuclear program


On January 3, after a New Year's break, the eighth round of talks resumed in the Austrian capital aimed at restoring the JCPOA to its original form and returning the United States to this multilateral agreement. Following a meeting of the Joint Commission of Iran and the five international mediators (Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France), the sides agreed to accelerate the process of working on the draft agreement and complete it by early February. On January 14, Lavrov reported that real progress was being made in the negotiations.


The republic and the then six mediators (which included the US) reached an agreement on resolving the problem of Iran's nuclear program on July 14, 2015, and the JCPOA they developed came into force on October 18 of the same year. The plan called for the gradual lifting of sanctions in exchange for Tehran's commitments to limit nuclear activities and bring them under international control.


In 2018, however, Washington withdrew from the agreement and renewed anti-Iranian sanctions. Due to the fact that the euro-troika did not take concrete steps to support the Iranian economy, on May 8, 2019, Tehran began a gradual suspension of its commitments and on January 5, 2020, announced the fifth and final step of departure from the agreements.


At the same time, the Iranian authorities said that it was possible to return to the implementation of the agreement, provided that all parties to it fulfilled their obligations. Then-US President Donald Trump suggested that the JCPOA participants abandon the document and work on a new treaty.


About Ebrahim Raisi


Raisi was born on December 14, 1960, in Mashhad. He studied Private International Law at Shahid Motahari University in Mashhad. Shahid Motahari University in Tehran, and subsequently received his PhD in law and Islamic law there as well.


Raisi was Iran's attorney general from 2014-2016 and headed the country's Supreme Court in 2019. As head of the judiciary, he launched a major campaign against corruption and initiated draft laws to protect women from domestic violence.


Raisi first ran for president in 2017 but lost to Hassan Rouhani, who was re-elected for a second term (38% vs. 57% for Rouhani). He won the elections last June 18 with more than 60% of the votes (Mohsen Rezaei came second with 11.5%). The turnout was 48.8%, a record low in modern Iranian history.


Raisi belongs to the ultra-conservative political wing. He is a supporter of a hard line in relations with the West, while not opposing the reinstatement of the Iranian nuclear agreement. In his election program, Raisi focused on such issues as poverty reduction and the fight against corruption, promising to build four million new houses for the needy in four years.

 

 

GSV "Russia - Islamic world"

Photo: Federation Council

Based on materials from TASS