Istanbul/Moscow: Iran's supreme leader sent his foreign minister to Moscow on Monday to ask President Vladimir Putin for more help from Russia after the biggest U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution over the weekend.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel have publicly speculated about killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and about regime change, a step Russia fears could sink the Middle East into the abyss.
While Putin has condemned the Israeli strikes, he has yet to comment on the U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites though he last week called for calm and offered Moscow's services as a mediator over the nuclear programme.
A senior source told Reuters that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was due to deliver a letter from Khamenei to Putin, seeking the latter's support.
Iran has not been impressed with Russia's support so far, Iranian sources told Reuters, and the country wants Putin to do more to back it against Israel and the United States. The sources did not elaborate on what assistance Tehran wanted.
The Kremlin said that Putin would receive Araqchi but did not say what would be discussed.
Araqchi was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying that Iran and Russia were coordinating their positions on the current escalation in the Middle East.
Putin has repeatedly offered to mediate between the United States and Iran, and said that he had conveyed Moscow's ideas on resolving the conflict to them while ensuring Iran's continued access to civil nuclear energy.
The Kremlin chief last week refused to discuss the possibility that Israel and the United States would kill Khamenei.
Putin said that Israel had given Moscow assurances that Russian specialists helping to build two more reactors at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran would not be hurt in air strikes.
Russia, a longstanding ally of Tehran, plays a role in Iran's nuclear negotiations with the West as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and a signatory to an earlier nuclear deal Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
But Putin, whose army is fighting a major war of attrition in Ukraine for the fourth year, has so far shown little appetite in public for diving into a confrontation with the United States over Iran just as Trump seeks to repair ties with Moscow.
Putin says aggression' on Tehran 'unjustified'
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Iran's foreign minister on Monday there was no justification for the U.S. bombing of his country and that Moscow was trying to help the Iranian people.
Putin hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Moscow two days after U.S. President Donald Trump sent U.S. bomber planes to strike Iran's three main nuclear sites.
"The absolutely unprovoked aggression against Iran has no basis and no justification," Putin told Araqchi in televised comments.
"For our part, we are making efforts to assist the Iranian people," he added.
"I am very glad that you are in Moscow today, this will give us the opportunity to discuss all these pressing issues and think together about how we could get out of today's situation."
Araqchi told Putin that Iran was conducting legitimate self-defence, and thanked Russia for condemning the U.S. actions. He conveyed best wishes to Putin from Iran's supreme leader and president.
"Russia is today on the right side of history and international law," said Araqchi.
It was unclear, however, what Russia might do to support Iran, an important ally with which Putin signed a strategic cooperation treaty in January. That agreement did not include a mutual defence clause.
Before Saturday's U.S. strikes, Moscow had warned that U.S. military intervention could destabilise the entire region and plunge it into the "abyss".
Asked what Russia was ready to do to help Tehran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "It all depends on what Iran needs". He said the fact that Moscow had offered to mediate in the crisis was itself a form of support.
Peskov condemned the U.S. attacks.
"An increase in the number of participants in this conflict is happening - or rather, has happened. A new spiral of escalation of tension in the region," Peskov told reporters.
"And, of course, we condemn this and express regret in this regard, deep regret. In addition, of course, it remains to be seen what happened to (Iran's) nuclear facilities, whether there is a radiation hazard."
Peskov said Trump had not told Putin in detail about the planned strikes in advance.
"There was no detailed information. The topic of Iran itself was repeatedly discussed by the presidents during their most recent conversations, certain proposals were voiced by Russia, but there was no direct detailed information about this," he said.
