Following a recent visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Tehran, where he attended a three-way summit with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts Ibrahim Raisi and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the United States has claimed that Iran risks becoming dependent on Russia.
This development comes after Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the sidelines of the summit called for "long-term cooperation" with Russia.
"Iran has now cast its lot with a small number of countries who wore that veil of neutrality only to end up supporting President Putin in his war against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people," Ned Price, spokesman for the US Department of State, said as quoted by AFP.
Price suggested, however, that by complying with the 2015 nuclear deal – brokered by Barack Obama during his presidency, scrapped by his successor Donald Trump and now backed by the current POTUS Joe Biden – Iran would start a new "economic relationship with other countries around the world."
Meanwhile, CIA chief Bill Burns suggested that Russia and Iran are reaching out to each other because both countries are under sanctions and are "looking to break out of political isolation."
"But if they need each other, they don't really trust each other in the sense that they are energy rivals and historical competitors," he claimed while speaking at the Aspen Security Forum.
The United States and its allies have imposed several rounds of tough economic sanctions against Russia following the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, with the goal of said operation being defined by Moscow as the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.