Putin and Rezaei at the Kremlin: a message from Mojtaba Khamenei to the Russian president, with the head of the GRU in the room

With a message from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the secretary of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, arrived at the Kremlin on Thursday, November 5. The meeting with Vladimir Putin was confirmed by the Russian presidency in a statement with photographs, while the delivery of the message was made known by Iranian state television.

Rezaei was already in Moscow and was received at the Senate Palace, which houses the Russian president’s offices. In the Kremlin’s photographs he appears in the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards, a force he commanded from 1981 to 1997, that is, for most of the Iran-Iraq war.

Particular weight is given to the meeting by the composition of the Russian delegation. On the Russian side took part Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Igor Kostyukov, head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU.

Putin and Rezaei had already spoken by phone on November 2, in a call the Iranian agency Tasnim presented as part of “high-level consultations” between Tehran and Moscow, after recent meetings of senior officials of the two countries. The focus was developments in the region and internationally, with an emphasis on West Asia. Rezaei and Putin agreed, according to the Iranian side, that the strategic partnership of the two countries must continue on the basis of the action plan drawn up by their top leaderships.

The meeting comes a day after Khamenei’s message on the US midterm elections, in which the Iranian leader warned that a new American attack would provoke a much more severe response. Russia is among the countries trying to mediate so that hostilities do not resume. Already in October Putin had assured Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that Moscow is ready to do everything it can to end the war, while this week Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed concern at signs that a new military action against Iran is being planned.

The same day, Zakharova repeated the advice to Russian citizens to avoid travel to Iran. “As the risk of a new escalation around Iran remains, the recommendations to Russian citizens do not change,” she said at the weekly press briefing, urging those already in the country to stay alert and avoid crowds, mass events and areas near military and government installations. She added that people are strongly advised not to photograph or film critical transport and energy infrastructure, still less military sites.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump told the Financial Times there is no immediate plan for a strike on Iran, stressing however that the US military is in full readiness. In this climate Tehran is sending the secretary of its Supreme National Security Council directly to Putin, with a message from the Supreme Leader himself and with the head of Russian military intelligence in the room.