Russia said on Friday it was ready to help resolve the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program after Russian President Vladimir Putin said this month he was receiving messages from both Israel and Iran.
“Moscow remains firmly committed to a political and diplomatic settlement around the Iranian nuclear program and calls on all parties involved to focus their efforts on finding the necessary solutions to avoid a new uncontrolled escalation of tensions,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We are ready to assist in this endeavor in any way possible," it added.
Iranian security chief Ali Larijani met Putin on Thursday and announced later he had delivered a message from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Its contents were not disclosed.
Putin said earlier this month that Israel had reached out to enlist Moscow's aid in transmitting to Tehran its desire to avoid further clashes.
“We continue our trusted contacts with Israel and are receiving signals from the Israeli leadership asking us to convey to our Iranian friends that Israel is focused on further settlement and is not interested in any form of confrontation,” Putin said, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would soon meet Putin in the Hungarian capital to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, though a date has yet to be set. It was unclear if Iran would be a topic of discussion.
'Brute force'
The Russian foreign ministry statement was released on the eve of the expiration of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed a 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the JCPOA.
Last month, UN sanctions were reimposed on Iran after France, Germany and the United Kingdom triggered the so-called snapback mechanism under the resolution, after they accused Tehran of spurning diplomacy and nuclear inspections.
Tehran rejects the powers' standing to invoke the sanctions and denies seeking any nuclear arms.
Russia said earlier this month the restoration of UN sanctions on Iran was "legally null and void and cannot impose any legal obligations on other states."
Moscow added on Friday that following the resolution’s expiry, Iran’s nuclear program should now be treated like that of any other non-nuclear weapon state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
The ministry said Western states had rejected a joint Russian-Chinese proposal to extend the technical aspects of the deal by six months, showing what it called “an inability to negotiate and a reliance on illegal methods and brute force.”
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was surprised by Iran's agreement to the so-called UN snapback sanctions mechanism of the JCPOA, describing it as a legal trap for Tehran.
“To be honest, we were surprised. But if our Iranian partners accepted this formulation - which, frankly, was a legal trap - we had no grounds to object,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Monday.
The snapback provision allowed any JCPOA signatory, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran in the event of alleged violations without the possibility of a veto.
