Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu held talks with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Tuesday, Russian and Iranian media said, days after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Unin Pyongyang.
Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu © JMN
Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu held talks with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Tuesday, Russian and Iranian media said, days after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Unin Pyongyang.
Russia has deepened ties with Iran and North Korea, both of which are hostile to the United States, since the start of its war in Ukraine.
The United States views the growing relationships with concern and says both countries are supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for use in the conflict, something Moscow denies.
Shoigu's trips are taking place at a crucial moment in the two-and-a-half-year war, as Kyiv presses the United States and its allies to let it use Western-supplied long-range weapons to strike targets such as airfields deep inside Russian territory.
President Vladimir Putin said last week that Western countries would be fighting Russia directly if they gave the green light, and that Moscow would respond.
The Nour news agency, affiliated to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Shoigu met his Iranian opposite number, Ali Akbar Ahmadian. There was no immediate information on the outcome of the meeting.
Russia has repeatedly said it is close to signing a major agreement with Iran to seal a strategic partnership between the two countries.
Shoigu was Russian defence minister until May, when he was appointed secretary of the Security Council that brings together President Vladimir Putin's military and intelligence chiefs and other senior officials.
Apart from meeting North Korea's Kim last week, he also held talks in St Petersburg with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Reporting by Moscow and Dubai newsrooms
Iranian and European officials will meet at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week in a test of whether the two sides can find a path back to diplomacy over Iran's nuclear programme, while lowering tensions with Israel and the West.
More than 130 world leaders will meet at the United Nations next week, faced with wars in the Middle East and Europe threatening to spread, frustration at the slow pace of efforts to end those conflicts, and worsening climate and humanitarian crises.
Iranian cyber actors sent messages during the summer to people involved in President Joe Biden's then re-election campaign containing non-public material from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign as part of efforts to influence the Nov. 5 election, U.S. agencies said on Wednesday.
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