Defense cooperation between Russia and Iran is not directed against any other country, and the West should look in the mirror before hurling accusations against the Islamic Republic, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has said.
“Military and defense ties between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation exist in the framework of the common interests of the two countries and are not directed against any third state. The military and defense ties between Iran and Russia precede the start of the military crisis in Ukraine,” Kanaani said in an interview with Sputnik Persian on Friday.
Kanaani dismissed claims made by Western officials and media that Iran is supporting Russia militarily in Ukraine as baseless “propaganda,” saying anyone making such accusations should take a look at the billions in military support their own countries are sending.
“Countries that export tens of billions worth of weapons to one side in the conflict are not helping to end the conflict. Their actions do not support a political solution,” the spokesman noted, pointing to Tehran’s efforts to keep up contacts with both Russia and Ukraine in the interest of finding a political solution to the crisis.
US and NATO officials and media have spent months alleging that Iran has been providing Russia with hundreds of drones for its military operation in Ukraine. Russian and Iranian officials have vocally dismissed these allegations, accusing Western countries of using them to justify their own illegal arms supplies to Kiev.
Big Potential
Russia and Iran have “great, shared and complementary economic capacities,” and their ever-expanding cooperation “is based on the common interests of the two nations in the economic, commercial, industrial, energy and transportation fields, as well as banking and finance,” Kanaani said.
US intransigence on lifting sanctions against Iran and returning to the nuclear agreement have driven Tehran into dramatically ramp up its strategic cooperation with both Russia and China over the past year, with the country applying to join the BRICS group of nations, becoming an acceding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and inking a series of bilateral agreements on trade, energy, technology and banking cooperation with its Russian and Chinese partners.
Russian-Iranian trade jumped 15 percent in 2022 and reached $4.6 billion, while trade with China increased by 7 percent to $25.3 billion.
Last month, Russian Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin paid a visit to Tehran, where he announced that lawmakers in the two countries were working on “a new basic interstate agreement and a number of specific deals” in fields including energy, agriculture, logistics, investments and customs regulation. Russia is also interested in “joint large-scale infrastructure projects, and the expansion of economic cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union and Iran,” the speaker said.