Iranian officials on Thursday met with their Chinese and Russian counterparts to discuss ongoing nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the Trump administration. Leaders of the three countries met to "coordinate their positions ahead" of an upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hearing on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
The summit is yet another sign of deepening ties between the United States’ adversaries. Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this month agreed to extend a line of credit to Iran, begin building a new nuclear facility in the country, and expand operations at an existing plant.
Russian permanent representative to international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov described Thursday’s discussion as "very useful," saying it helps the three countries "coordinate closely our positions," and Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed that he met with Chinese and Russian officials to discuss the negotiations.
"In separate meetings with the ambassadors of Russia and China, we reviewed the development and strengthening of cooperation within the framework of these two important groups of countries," Gharibabadi said.
Western nonproliferation experts, meanwhile, fear that Iran, China, and Russia have crafted plans to weaken the Trump administration’s negotiating position.
"Russia and China are coordinating on how to cajole Trump into a weak Iran nuclear deal and helping Tehran evade consequences at an upcoming IAEA board meeting, which would include avoiding the U.S. and E3’s [France, Germany, and the United Kingdom] restoration of U.N. Iran sanctions before their expiration in October," Foundation for Defense of Democracies research fellow Andrea Stricker told the Washington Free Beacon. "This is what friends do for their junior ‘Axis of Aggressors’ member."
Russia and China, both U.N. Security Council members, are capable of persuading the international body to refrain from reimposing the economic sanctions lifted as part of the original 2015 nuclear deal. Both countries’ diplomatic sway enables Iran to take a hardline approach in its negotiations with the United States.
Iran’s foreign ministry emphasized on Wednesday—just a day before the trilateral meeting—that the country will not give up its right to enrich uranium, the fuel that powers a nuclear bomb.
"Continuing enrichment in Iran is an uncompromising principle," Iranian diplomatic spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said.
That demand is currently the central roadblock in talks with the United States and could scuttle the chances of securing a deal, the Free Beacon recently reported.
"We have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment," White House envoy Steve Witkoff said last week. "We cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability."
Witkoff and State Department policy planning director Michael Anton traveled to Rome last Friday for a fifth round of talks with Iran that appeared to make little headway.
The discussion surrounding nuclear talks was not the only conversation between Iran and Russia to take place this week. Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, met with Putin assistant Nikolai Patrushev. The two sides discussed the "development of bilateral relations within the framework of the comprehensive strategic agreement between the two countries," according to Iran’s state-controlled press.
Iran and Russia also agreed to "significantly increase" their military cooperation this week, drawing substantially closer at a time when tough U.S. economic sanctions are crippling both countries' economies.
During high-level meetings in Moscow this past Thursday, Russian security council secretary Sergei Shoigu pledged to enhance work with Tehran "in the military-technical field," Iranian media reported. The talks signaled a "high level of Russian-Iranian political dialogue," according to Shoigu, and came just months after the two countries signed a historic 20-year diplomatic pact.
Tehran and Moscow have increasingly relied on each other to create sanction-evasion networks meant to bypass tough American measures on both malign regimes. Hamas, for instance, Tehran’s chief terror proxy group, has primarily used weaponry built by Russia, China, and North Korea in its war against Israel.