Tuesday saw Russian President Vladimir Putin meet with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was Putin’s first trip outside the former Soviet Union since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Putin also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the head of NATO, for the first time since the invasion, in Tehran, to talk about a deal that would restart grain exports from Ukraine to the Black Sea as well as the crisis in northern Syria.
Putin’s visit sends a clear message to the West about Moscow’s plans to forge closer strategic ties with Iran, China, and India in response to Western sanctions. It comes just days after U.S. President Joe Biden visited Israel and Saudi Arabia.
According to Iranian state TV, Khamenei urged long-term collaboration between Iran and Russia, warning Putin that the two nations must be watchful against ‘Western lies.’
He asserted that Putin had made sure that Russia ‘kept its independence’ from the United States and that nations ought to begin exchanging commodities in their own national currencies.
In a stark white room with an Iranian flag and a portrait of the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Khamenei remarked during the conference that ‘the U.S. dollar should be gradually removed from world trade, and this can be done gradually.’
Despite the suffering that regular people go through in conflict, Khamenei claimed that Moscow has few other options in Ukraine. Putin was told by him, ‘if you hadn’t taken the initiative, the other side (the West) would have started a war on its own initiative.’
Putin’s visit to Tehran, according to Washington, demonstrated how isolated Russia had grown as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
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