The Kremlin announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Wednesday for talks aimed at restoring the Iran nuclear accord.
Raisi’s travel to Russia will be his most important official tour since taking office in August, and it will be the first visit by an Iranian president to Russia since 2017.
According to the Kremlin, the leaders would address a “wide range of bilateral cooperation issues,” including the 2015 deal that relieved Iran of sanctions in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Under former President Donald Trump’s administration, Washington declared its unilateral withdrawal from the accord in 2018, prompting Iran to pull out of its commitments.
Iran has been in talks with the accord’s signatories, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and Germany, since last year, but talks halted in June after Raisi’s victory. They began again in November.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, hailed “great progress” in the negotiations earlier this month.
Moscow and Tehran have extensive political, economic, and military relations, as well as common interests in Afghanistan. They are also key friends of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s decade-long civil conflict.
