Opinion: Solution of the Iranian nuclear issue is in Tehran and Washington, not in Moscow

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A declaration is signed under results of the Caspian summit in Tehran, however, no practical agreement on the Caspian status will be reached, Vice President of Noravank Foundation, expert Sevak Sarukhanyan said talking to a REGNUM correspondent.

According to him, the impossibility to reach a final agreement of the issue is, first of all, connected with the position of Iran that is left the poorest section of the Caspian basin. Sarukhanyan reminded that Iran has always spoken for determining the status taking into account historical borders, geographical specifics and the political aspect related to collapse of the USSR, in connection with which in the new political conditions the Soviet-Iranian agreements cannot be treated as the basis for settling the Caspian status. He noted the issue is vital for Iran, as the final decision on determining the Caspian status will have serious strategic importance for the region and can extend opportunities for establishing new formats in the military strategic cooperation in the region, particularly, with the US participation. Iran will be avoiding taking sides in the issue until the rest four Caspian countries assign the Caspian status via bilateral and multilateral treaties, which already exist between Russia and Azerbaijan or Russia and Kazakhstan.

Commenting on the fact that the Russian president visited Iran for the first time and the visit coincided with the summit, Sevak Sarukhanyan noted that if one takes into account the fact that Russia for a long time was led not only by secretaries-general, after 1943 the country was visited several times by USSR top officials – Podgorny, Kosygin, and the Iranian shakh visited Russia twice.

The current Putin’s trip to Iran is both a visit to Iran and not a visit to Iran, as its main task is participation in a multilateral meeting that is held in the Iranian territory. “The noise stirred in the Russian media about possible plot against Vladimir Putin, to my mind, is aimed at showing that Putin’s visit to Iran is not a visit by Hugo Chavez. Putin is not visiting an allied country, he is visiting a country where a plot can be executed against him,” the expert said adding that had the summit taken place in another country, there would have been no Putin’s visit to Iran.

The analyst also supposed that during Putin-Ahmadinejad talks, no solution of the Iranian nuclear problem should be expected. “The key to the issue is in Tehran and Washington but not in Moscow,” Sarukhanyan concluded.