The president invited permanent members of the Russian Security Council to discuss the situation in the Caspian Region and noted that Iran is one of Russia's neighbors in the Caspian Five.
"Many issues related to the Iran nuclear programme are currently being addressed. I hope that everything related to the JCPOA will be restored within the previous framework and we will be ready to develop full-fledged relations with all the members of the Caspian club and to fully implement our plans," Putin told the security council.
On 26 April, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's envoy to the JCPOA talks in Vienna, stated that Russia was intent on preventing Iran from possessing a nuclear bomb under any circumstances, adding that the parties had already managed to resolve one of the main obstacles to reaching an agreement, namely ditching the "nuclear deal plus" idea that included restrictions on Iran's missile programme, previously embedded in the JCPOA agreement.
Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, that Russia was reiterating its stance that Iran should be involved in all joint mechanisms to ensure collective security in the Persian Gulf region.
In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with the P5+1 group of countries, including Russia, the US, the UK, China, France plus Germany. The agreement required Iran to scale back its nuclear programme and downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal and began re-imposing sanctions on Iran, who retaliated by starting to gradually abandon its own JCPOA commitments a year later.
