Putin seeks to prevent USA’s unilateral military course against Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, shrugging off reports of a plot to assassinate him in Tehran, said he'll go ahead with a planned trip to Iran where talks will include the Islamic Republic's “nuclear dossier.”

“Of course I'll go to Iran,” Putin told a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt. If he heeded every threat he was informed of, “I'd never leave home,” he said.

Putin gave no indication of any softening in Russia's opposition to calls by the U.S. for stronger international sanctions on Iran unless it halts its nuclear program. That contrasted with Merkel's insistence that Iran fulfill United Nations Security Council demands to suspend the enrichment of uranium or “there will have to be a new round of sanctions.”
In two resolutions, the Security Council has barred Iran from acquiring nuclear-bomb-making technology and has frozen the assets of people and groups linked to its nuclear program. Iran says its atomic program is aimed solely at producing energy.

On the eve of Putin’s visit to Iran Pravda.Ru interviewed two major Middle East and Russian policy experts Marshall Goldman and Flynt Leverett. Marshall Goldman is Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Russian Economics (Emeritus) at Wellesley College. Flynt Leverett is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Pravda.Ru: How could you comment on Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran?

Flynt Leverett: Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, Iran has become an increasingly important regional partner for Russia—in terms of Islamic issues, the regional balance of power in Central Asia, economic relations, and energy. This trend has accelerated under President Putin, and his visit to Iran—the first by a Russian leader since Stalin attended the Tehran summit with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II—reflects that. More on the story.