Putin to visit Tehran on Aug. 12 for nuclear talks

MOSCOW: Russian leader Vladimir Putin will meet Iran’s newly elected president in Tehran next month to discuss restarting talks on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, Russian and Iranian media reports said on Wednesday.
The Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted a source close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry as saying President Putin would visit on Aug. 12, days after Hassan Rowhani is inaugurated.
Iran’s Mehr news agency said Putin would travel to Iran on Aug. 16, without citing a source.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined comment on the reports. Putin last visited Iran in 2007 to attend a summit of states bordering the Caspian Sea.
World powers hope Iran’s relatively moderate new leader will comply with demands for Tehran to scale back nuclear work which they suspect is aimed at enabling it to make bombs.
Iran says it is enriching uranium, the fissile material for atomic bombs, only to fuel nuclear power stations and for medical purposes.
Once Rowhani takes office, Tehran’s hardline team in nuclear talks with six world powers is likely to be overhauled.
Although the president holds influence, Iran’s theocratic supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wields ultimate control over Iranian nuclear policy.
The last high-level talks between Iran and six world powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — were held in Kazakhstan in April. They failed to break the deadlock.
Moscow has proposed a compromise under which Tehran would be rewarded for scaling back on enrichment with concessions on international sanctions over the nuclear programme.
Kommersant also cited a defence industry source as saying Putin could discuss an offer to replace frozen shipments of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Tehran with deliveries of Antey-2500 anti-ballistic missiles, an upgrade of the S-300s. Russia scrapped an S-300 sale to Iran in 2010 after it came under international pressure not to complete the deal because of the sanctions.
Russia flays US for arming Syrian rebels
Russia accused the United States on Wednesday of stalling chances for peace in Syria by pressing ahead with plans to arm rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad. Russia is at loggerheads over the conflict with its UN Security Council partner, the United States, where President Barack Obama can now move forward with arming rebels after easing some congressional concerns.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a press conference that Washington’s plans would undermine joint efforts to organise an international peace conference on Syria that he agreed to with his US counterpart, John Kerry, in May.
“If our American partners are now focusing on arming the opposition and are sharing plans... to strike Syrian government positions, then this, of course, runs against agreements to hold a conference,” he said.
“That goes against our joint initiative.” The chances of bringing Syria’s divided opposition and Assad’s representatives to the negotiating table have faded in recent weeks, and help from Hezbollah has tilted the situation on the ground in Assad’s favour.
More support from the United States could help the rebels push back. US forces could help in various ways, the top US military officer has said, from training to enforcing no-fly zones or conducting limited attacks on military targets.