Some sort of accord between the U.S. and Iran would go a long way towards defusing Middle East tensions. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:
If an Iranian-US “New Détente” follows the nascent Russian-US one, brokered as it might be by Putin as a reciprocal favor to Trump for everything that he’s now boldly doing, then this would completely transform Western Eurasian geopolitics and consequently unlock exciting geo-economic opportunities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that Russia “is ready to do everything in its power” to help the US and Iran “resolve all problems through negotiations”, which was then followed by Putin’s foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov revealing that Russia and the US agreed to hold talks on Iran in the future. Their remarks came in response to Bloomberg reporting that Trump relayed this request to Putin directly during their call in mid-February and that their representatives then discussed it in Riyadh shortly after.
The larger context concerns the nascent Russian–US “New Détente” brought about by Trump’s foreign policy revolution, the Iranian dimension of which was touched upon by Newsweek last week here, where it was correctly predicted that Russia will try to help the US and Iran patch up their differences. Russia’s motives are to reciprocate the US’ assistance in resolving the Ukrainian Conflict, avert a potential hot war along its southern periphery, and redirect the US military’s focus further away from its borders.
To that end, given the mutual trust between Russia and Iran as proven by mid-January’s updated strategic partnership pact, Putin and his representatives are in a prime position to explain Trump’s revolutionary foreign policy to their counterparts and convince them to enter talks in good faith. They can also share their experiences engaging with his administration so as to increase the odds of any prospective US-Iranian talks succeeding and leading to their own mutually beneficial “New Détente”.
