Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, who had traveled to Moscow empty-handed to ask the Kremlin to mediate in the Caucasus, left for Lebanon empty-handed.
“We oppose provocative maneuvers in the region,” Sergey Lavrov told a joint news conference with the two foreign ministers. “Iran’s maneuvers on the border with Azerbaijan are provocative and have upset Azerbaijan.” Amir Abdollahian replied: “No, these are Turkish and Azerbaijani activities that are provocative. We have concerns about the South Caucasus. We believe that the region has no new capacity for unrest. We do not tolerate a change in the geopolitical map of the Caucasus under any circumstances.”
Also, given the dire state of foreign exchange resources of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Amir Abdollahian has asked Russia for more trade, to which Lavrov replied, “JCPOA should be implemented first.” According to Javad Zarif former Iranian foreign minister, the Russians were so opposed to the JCPOA that Sergei Lavrov refused to stand in the final photo of the 2015 talks after a verbal confrontation with Javad Zarif. The 25-year agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Chinese Communist government seems to have caused deep dissatisfaction among the Kremlin.
At the same time as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was in Moscow, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart: “There is a limited runway on that (JCPOA), and the runway is getting shorter.” Blinken continued, “The ball remains in Iran court, but not for long.”
