Putin lauds Iran for cooperation on Syria

TEHRAN – Agence France-Presse

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s leadership on Nov. 1, with the two Damascus allies pushing a peace deal on Syria and looking to boost business despite U.S. opposition to a landmark nuclear deal.

The Kremlin strongman’s first visit to Iran since 2015 comes as Moscow seeks to turn its game-changing military intervention in Syria into a concerted push to bring a halt to fighting in the country with the help of Tehran, President Bashar al-Assad’s other key backer.

“We are working very productively with Iran and we manage to coordinate our positions on Syria,” Putin said after talks with Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and the Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei said the “good cooperation between Tehran and Moscow in Syria shows that the two countries can realize their objectives even in difficult terrain,” and insisted that all solutions to the conflict come “from inside the country.”

Russia, Iran and Turkey pledged after a latest round of negotiations in Kazakhstan on Oct. 31 to bring the Syrian regime and its opponents together for a “congress” to push peace efforts in the Russian city of Sochi on November 18.