Iran's ambassador to Russia said Saturday that Tehran expects to receive the first batch of Moscow's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine by February 4, state news agency IRNA reported.
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All tagged Russia
◢ Iran overtook Russia to emerge as the top buyer of Indian tea last year, after sanctions against the Islamic Republic halted imports other than specially negotiated deals. India and Iran have been trading through a rupee-based bank account to bypass restrictions imposed by the U.S.
◢ Russia, seeing prospects for multi-billion dollar deals, ruled out extending a United Nations-approved arms embargo on Iran that expires in October next year, despite U.S. warnings. “We’re not ready to do the bidding of our American colleagues,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters.
◢ China, Russia and Iran will hold joint naval drills starting Friday in the Gulf of Oman, Beijing and Tehran said. For Iran, the drill's purpose was to bolster "international commerce security in the region" and "fighting terrorism and piracy," said senior armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Aboldazl Shekarchi.
◢ Iran will seek to modernize its forces by purchasing advanced weapons systems once a United Nations arms embargo expires next year, the Pentagon is warning in a new report. Iran wants to purchase weapons “it has largely been unable to acquire for decades” when the embargo expires in October 2020.
◢ Tehran and Moscow inaugurated on Sunday a new phase of construction for a second reactor at Iran's sole nuclear power plant in Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iran’s nuclear agency, and deputy chief of Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom, Alexander Lokshin, launched the new stage at a ceremony where concrete was poured for the reactor base.
◢ Azerbaijan’s state oil company is turning to Russia to supply a new $6.3 billion refinery it built in Turkey because shipments from one of its preferred suppliers—Iran—are off the table due to U.S. sanctions. “If there were no restrictions, we would buy Iranian crude,” he said, adding that the refinery can purchase oil from anywhere “as long as our model supports it,” although in practice Azerbaijan’s own light crude isn’t really suitable.
◢ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday called on European signatories to abide by the Iran nuclear deal, following a meeting in Moscow. Zarif's visit came as Tehran said it had stopped respecting limits on its nuclear activities agreed under the deal until other signatories find a way to bypass renewed US sanctions.
◢ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif in Moscow on Wednesday, the Russian foreign ministry said Tuesday. The two diplomats, longtime allies on a number of issues including the Syrian conflict, will discuss "key issues of the international and regional agenda" as well as bilateral cooperation, the ministry said in a statement.
◢ If President Donald Trump succeeds in cutting Iran’s oil exports to almost nothing, one of the main beneficiaries is likely to be Russia. The economic blow to Iran will ease the Kremlin’s efforts to rein in Iranian influence in Syria, bolstering President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russian power across the Middle East.
◢ Russia on Tuesday slammed a planned US-Polish conference on peace and security in the Middle East as "counterproductive" because of its focus on countering Iran, and said it would not attend. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced plans for the major conference in Warsaw on February 13 and 14 to be attended by ministers from a dozen countries.
◢ The resumption of wide-ranging American sanctions on Iran promises economic uncertainty for the Islamic Republic’s neighbors in the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. All three have to various extents relied on Iran for natural gas, and stand to be affected—if only by uncertainty until the exact scope of the sanctions becomes clearer.
◢ The foreign ministers of Spain and Russia on Tuesday hit out at US sanctions policy against Iran and ultimatums they say are being imposed by Donald Trump's administration. President Trump in May abandoned a 2015 multi-nation deal with Iran aimed at reining in its nuclear program. The deal had been unanimously endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, making it legally binding.
◢ Befitting his bull-in-a-china-shop reputation, John Bolton's whirlwind tour of the Caucasus left a trail of geopolitical wreckage that his hosts are still trying to pick up even after Bolton himself is back in Washington. As expected, the visit of Bolton, the U.S. National Security Adviser, focused on getting the states of the South Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—on board with Washington's efforts to isolate Iran.
◢ Oil cartel OPEC has "not much credit" left as some members are turning it into "a tool for the US", a senior Iranian official said in comments published Saturday. "Saudi Arabia and the UAE are turning OPEC into a tool for the US and consequently the organization has not much credit left," Iran's OPEC governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili told the Shana newswire, affiliated to Iran's Oil Ministry.
◢ Companies from dozens of countries are showing their wares at the Damascus International Fair this week, but those from two in particular are getting special treatment—Russia and Iran. Firms from the top two wartime allies of Syria's government are set up in an entirely separate building, hinting at the preferred status they hope to enjoy as the country tries to transition into reconstruction.
◢ The leaders of the five states bordering the Caspian Sea meet in Kazakhstan on Sunday to sign a landmark deal on the inland sea which boasts a wealth of oil and gas reserves and sturgeon. Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan are expected to agree a long-awaited convention on the legal status of the sea, which has been disputed since the collapse of the Soviet Union rendered obsolete agreements between Tehran and Moscow.
