Putin says growing ties with ‘very close’ ally Iran is top priority

Russian leader and Mazoud Pezeshkian’s first meeting comes as Iran faces a serious threat of retaliation from Israel

Vladimir Putin said growing ties with Iran were a “priority” as he met the country’s president to discuss Middle East tensions in a surprise summit.
The two leaders talked up their “very close” relations in their first meeting, which came as Iran is facing a major threat of retaliation from Israel.
The meeting in Ashgabat, the capital of the secretive state of Turkmenistan, between the two leaders of the West’s most dangerous enemies appeared friendly.
Cameras showed Putin and Mr Pezeshkian shaking hands and smiling as they listened to each other through interpreters.
“Relations with Iran are a priority for us, they are developing very successfully. Our views of events in the world are often very close,” said Putin.
The alliance between Russia and Iran has grown stronger since the start of the war in Ukraine, with Iran sending drones and missiles to Russia, in return for oil and technical know-how.
Iran is now facing its own crisis in the Middle East, prompting further questions over the transactional relationship between the two allies of the so-called “axis of evil”.
Putin had turned up to the meeting at Turkmenistan’s palatial Chamber of Commerce in his bulletproof black Russia-made limousine even though it is only legal to drive a silver or white car in Turkmenistan.
Responding to Putin, Mr Pezeshkian, who only became Iran’s president in July, agreed that Iran and Russia’s worldviews overlap.
“Economically and culturally, our communications are being strengthened day by day and becoming more robust,” he said.The two men are due to meet again at an economics summit in Russia on Oct 22-24.
In the build-up to the meeting, the Kremlin said that Putin and Mr Pezeshkian would focus on “escalating violence in the Middle East” and also suggested a bilateral agreement to intensify Iran-Russia cooperation would be signed, but neither materialised.
Even so, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top aide, said the meeting had been of “great importance”.
Kirill Semenov, a Middle East expert at the Russian International Affairs Council think tank, cautioned that Iran wanted more support from Russia but the Kremlin was hesitating.
“Nevertheless, the general approaches remain. Iran does not want to go deeper into this escalation and Russia agrees with this,” he said of growing violence in the region. “And now, in general, the main question is how Iran should act further.”
The meeting between Putin and Mr Pezeshkian was held on the fringes of an obscure conference honouring a Turkmen poet. Putin is not a regular visitor to former Soviet Turkmenistan and he was not scheduled to attend the conference until a few days ago.
Turkmenistan lies on the southern edge of Central Asia next to Iran. It is one of the most repressive countries in the world, with a dictatorship that has no free media or open political process.
It is ruled over by Serdar Berdymukhamedov, who inherited the presidency from his father, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, in 2022.
In its 2024 report on Turkmenistan, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said all basic rights were repressed and torture in prison was rife.
“Recent political reforms have only deepened authoritarian rule,” it said.
Mr Berdymukhamedov Snr has been president of Turkmenistan since 2007. Before him, the country was led by a dentist who had built a golden statue of himself that rotated to face the sun throughout the day.
Known for both his eccentricity and his diverse pastimes, Mr Berdymukhamedov Snr’s hobbies included producing rap videos with his grandson, performing doughnuts in a rally car and leading his government cabinet through gym workouts – all filmed for mainstream Turkmen TV channels.
In 2018, Mr Berdymukhamedov Snr banned all cars except for white and silver ones because he thought black cars were unlucky and decided that they ruined his vision of his white-marbled city gleaming in the sun.
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