Kremlin says Putin is ready to help Trump negotiate Iran nuclear deal – state
Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. President Donald Trump that he is ready to use the close partnership between Russia and Iran to help negotiate Iran's nuclear program, the Kremlin said Thursday.
Trump said after calling Putin on Wednesday that Iran had run out of time to make a decision on its nuclear program, and he believes Putin agrees that the Islamic Republic should not possess nuclear weapons.
According to Trump, Putin suggested he had a discussion with Iran, “maybe he might help conclude that Iran “walking slowly.”
“We have a close partnership with Tehran, and naturally, President Putin said we are ready to establish this level of partnership with Tehran to promote and contribute to negotiations on the resolution of Iran's nuclear archives,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
When asked when Putin could participate in the negotiations, Peskov said the dialogue with Tehran and Washington continued through various channels.
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“The president will be able to participate when necessary,” Peskov said.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that abandoning uranium enrichment was “100%” in violation of the country’s interests and rejecting demand from central U.S. to resolve decades of disputes over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Oman made a proposal for a new nuclear deal to Iran on Saturday, which mediated talks between Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Alakch and President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkov.
After five rounds of dialogue, there are still some difficult problems, including Iran's insistence on maintaining uranium enrichment on its soil, while Tehran refuses to ship all its existing highly enriched uranium stockpiles abroad, which may be the raw material for nuclear bombs.
Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of the state, did not say anything about stopping negotiations, but the United States proposed: “It contradicts the nation's belief in self-reliance, and the principle of 'we can' is inconsistent with it.”
–Report by Dmitry Antonov; Guy Faulconbridgeiting by Andrew Osborn
