A conference in Turkmenistan celebrating a local poet’s 300th birthday is not an obvious spot for the first meeting between Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president.

But these are urgent times for the West’s most dangerous enemies.

Analysts said that the meeting in Ashgabat on Friday, which will focus on “a sharply aggravated situation in the Middle East”, appears to have been arranged at the last minute.

“It is a very strange forum to hold their first meeting,” said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.