At the start of the year, Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart at the Kremlin to sign a new strategic partnership to seal the budding alliance between the two countries that had spent the last decade trying to undermine the U.S.-led world order.
Now, after more than a week of punishing Israeli and U.S. airstrikes, that partnership is doing Tehran little good.
When Putin met with Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, on Monday, the Kremlin leader gave a stony-faced assessment of the U.S. strikes. He called the strikes unjustified and unprovoked and said Russia wanted to help the Iranian people.
