Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sent his foreign minister to Moscow today to ask President Vladimir Putin for additional assistance from Russia following the largest US military action against the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution over the weekend, Reuters reports.
US President Donald Trump and Israel have publicly speculated about the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and regime change, a move that Russia fears could push the Middle East into the abyss.
Although Putin condemned the Israeli attacks, he has not yet commented on the US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, although last Sunday he called for calm and offered Moscow's services as a mediator over the nuclear program.
A senior source told Reuters that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was expected to deliver Khamenei's letter to Putin, seeking his support.
Iran has so far been unimpressed with Russian support, Iranian sources told Reuters, and the country wants Putin to do more to support it against Israel and the United States. The sources did not specify what kind of help Tehran wants.
The Kremlin announced that Putin would receive Aragchi, but did not say what would be discussed.
The state-run TASS news agency quoted Araghchi as saying that Iran and Russia were coordinating their positions on the current escalation in the Middle East.
Putin has repeatedly offered to mediate between the US and Iran and said he had conveyed Moscow's ideas on resolving the conflict, while ensuring Iran's continued access to civilian nuclear energy.
The Kremlin chief last week refused to discuss the possibility of Israel and the US assassinating Khamenei.
Putin said Israel had assured Moscow that Russian experts helping build two more reactors at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran would not be harmed in the airstrikes.
Russia, a longtime ally of Tehran, plays a role in Iran's nuclear negotiations with the West as a veto-wielding member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and a signatory to an earlier nuclear deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
But Putin, whose military has been waging a major war of attrition in Ukraine for four years, has so far shown little public desire to engage in conflict with the United States over Iran, just as Trump is trying to mend ties with Moscow.
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