Putin says Russia could help end Iran Israel conflict
Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered to help mediate an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran, suggesting a settlement could allow Tehran to pursue a peaceful atomic program while assuaging Israeli security concerns.
Speaking to senior news leaders of international news agencies, Putin noted that "it's a delicate issue," but added that "in my view, a solution could be found."
Putin said he shared Moscow's proposals with Iran, Israel and the United States. His comments follow a mediation offer that he made in a call with US President Donald Trump last weekend.
Trump said on Wednesday that he told Putin to keep focused on finding an endgame to his own conflict with Ukraine.
"I said, 'Do me a favour, mediate your own,'" Trump said he told Putin. "I said, 'Vladimir, let's mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later.'"
The comments represented a shift for Trump, who earlier this week said he was "open" to Putin's offer to mediate in the Middle East.
Putin, meeting with senior news leaders of international news agencies, on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, emphasised that Russia has a trusting relationship with Iran and built its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.
Russia has maintained a delicate balancing act in the Middle East for decades, trying to navigate its warm relations with Israel even as it has developed strong economic and military ties with Iran, a policy that potentially opens opportunities for Moscow to play power broker to help end the confrontation.
Putin used his round table to praise Trump's push for peace in Ukraine, seconding the US leader's repeated claims that the three-year-old conflict wouldn't have started if he had been in the White House in 2022.
"If Trump had been the president, the conflict indeed might not have erupted," Putin said.
Russia has intensified its aerial campaign in Ukraine in recent months and stepped up ground attacks along the more than 1,000-kilometre front line. He has effectively rejected Trump's offer of an immediate 30-day ceasefire, making it conditional on a halt on Ukraine's mobilisation effort and a freeze on Western arms supplies.
He said he is open for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but repeated his claim that he lost his legitimacy after his term expired last year - allegations rejected by Ukraine and its allies.
"We are ready for substantive talks on the principles of settlement," Putin said, noting that the previous round of talks had paved the way for the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of fallen soldiers.
The Russian leader also dismissed Western warnings of Russia's purported plans to attack NATO countries as "ravings," noting that the alliance's military spending far exceeds Moscow's defence budget.
The Russian leader has used the annual forum to highlight Russia's economic achievements and seek foreign investment. Western executives, who attended the event in the past, have avoided it after Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, leaving it to business leaders from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Putin met earlier with former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who now heads the New Development Bank created by the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
He is also set to have meetings with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
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ABC News
39 minutes ago
- ABC News
Vladimir Putin says he will only meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 'final phase' of peace talks
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is willing to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but only during a "final phase" of negotiations on ending their nations' conflict. He also suggested Mr Zelenskyy had no right to sign a peace agreement given his five-year mandate had expired under martial law, something Kyiv has dismissed as baseless propaganda. "We need to find a solution that would not only put an end to the current conflict, but also create conditions that would prevent similar situations from recurring in the long term," Mr Putin said in Saint Petersburg on Thursday, local time. "I am ready to meet with everyone, including Zelenskyy. "That is not the issue. If the Ukrainian state trusts someone in particular to conduct negotiations, for God's sake, it can be Zelenskyy. "We don't care who negotiates, even if it is the current head of the regime." The Russian leader added that this would only happen at a "final phase, so as not to sit there and divide things up endlessly, but to put an end to it". Talks on ending the three-year conflict have stalled in recent weeks, with Russia pushing uncompromising demands for ending the offensive while declining to attend a personal meeting with Mr Zelenskyy. Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging peace efforts to prolong the conflict. In the same press conference, Mr Putin said NATO's recent push to ramp up defence spending was not a "threat" to Russia. The NATO alliance is set to sign off on a plan to boost its military capacity across Europe at a crucial summit in The Hague next week. The Russian leader added that his troops would not stop pushing forward in Ukraine. He cast his offensive in Ukraine as part of a wider conflict between Russia and US-led NATO, which has been Ukraine's staunchest backer since Russia launched its offensive in February 2022. "We do not consider any rearmament by NATO to be a threat to the Russian Federation because we are self-sufficient in terms of ensuring our own security," Mr Putin said. Russia is "constantly modernising our armed forces and defensive capabilities", he said, adding that it made "no sense" for NATO to spend more money on arms. Though he conceded increased NATO spending would create some "specific" challenges for Russia, he brushed them off. "We will counter all threats that arise. There is no doubt about that," he said. Kyiv is seeking security guarantees from NATO as part of any deal to end the fighting, more than three years after Russia ordered its full-scale military offensive. AFP
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
US strike on Iran would bring peril at every turn
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a defiant response to Trump's call for 'unconditional surrender', but Trump said there were indications that the Iranians wanted to talk. There were also reports of an official Iranian plane landing in Oman, where many of the negotiations with Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, had taken place before Israel's attack. If Trump is taking a pause, it may be because the list of things that could go wrong is long, and probably incomplete. There's the obvious: It's possible that a B-2 could get shot down, despite Israel's success in taking out so many of Iran's air defences. It's possible the calculations are wrong, and even America's biggest conventional bomb can't get down that deep. 'I've been there, it's half a mile underground,' Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week, as the Israeli operation began. But assuming that the operation itself is successful, the largest perils may lie in the aftermath, many experts say, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are many lessons from that ugly era of misbegotten American foreign policy, but the most vital may be that it's the unknown unknowns that can come back to bite. Iran has vowed that if attacked by US forces, it would strike back, presumably against the US bases spread around the Middle East and the growing number of assets gathering in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. All are within missile range, assuming Iran has missiles and launchers left after the Israelis are done with their systematic targeting. Of course, that could start a cycle of escalation: If Americans are killed, or even injured, Trump will be under pressure to exact revenge. 'Subcontracting the Fordow job would put the United States in Iran's sights,' Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Steven Simon, a veteran of the National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week. 'Iran would almost certainly retaliate by killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United States to reciprocate. 'Soon enough, the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime's leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change business – a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be involved any longer.' The reaction could take other forms. Iran is skilled at terrorism, and reacted to the US-Israeli cyberattack on its nuclear program 15 years ago by building a fearsome cyber corps – not as stealthy as China's or as bold as Russia's, but capable of considerable damage. And it has plenty of short-range missiles left to attack oil tankers, making transit in the Persian Gulf too risky. The last thing the White House wants to do is air these risks in public. Democrats are calling for a congressional role, but they have no power to compel it. 'Given the potential for escalation, we must be brought into this decision,' Senator Adam Schiff of California, one of Trump's political rivals, said on CNN on Wednesday. 'Bombing Fordow would be an offensive activity.' And like most offensive activities, there are longer-term perils, beyond the cycle of attack and retaliation. Already the message of these past five days, as interpreted by Iranian leaders or others with nuclear skill, may well be that they should have raced for a bomb earlier, and more stealthily. That was what North Korea did, and it has now ended up with 60 or more nuclear weapons, despite years of American diplomacy and sabotage. It is a big enough arsenal to assure that its adversaries, South Korea and the US, would think twice about conducting the kind of operation that Israel executed against Iran. And history suggests that nuclear programs can be bombed, but not eliminated. 'Nuclear weapons can be stopped through force – the Syrian program is a good example,' said Gary Samore, who was the Obama administration's co-ordinator for weapons of mass destruction when the existence of the Fordow plant was made public. And in Iraq, after the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981, to keep Saddam Hussein from getting the fuel for a bomb, the Iraqis 'reacted by building a huge, secret program' that went undetected until after the Gulf War in 1991, Samore said. That was such an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies that more than a decade later they wildly overestimated his ability to do it again, contributing to the second failure – and leading the US into the Iraq War. But Samore added: 'I can't think of a case where air power alone was sufficient to end a program.' That is an important consideration for Trump. He must decide in the next few days whether Israel's attacks on Iran's Natanz enrichment facility, and its bombing of workshops where new centrifuges are made and laboratories where weapons research may have been taking place, are sufficient to set back the Iranian program. In short, he must decide whether it is worth the huge risk of direct US involvement for whatever gain would come from destroying Fordow with American pilots, American warplanes and American weapons. But he also doesn't want to be accused of missing the chance to set the Iranians back by years. 'If this war ends and this Fordow is left intact, then it wouldn't take long to get this going again,' said Samore, now a professor at Brandeis University. Trump has not weighed these questions in public, and it is always hard to know how he is assessing the evidence. He bristled the other day when a reporter noted to him that his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified in Congress just a few months ago that Iran had made no decision to produce a bomb. Loading Trump insisted that there wasn't much time left – though he cited no evidence to contradict his own intelligence chief. 'Don't forget, we haven't been fighting,' Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office. 'We add a certain amount of genius to everything, but we haven't been fighting at all. Israel's done a very good job today.' Then, muddying the waters anew, he turned to his signature phrase: 'But we'll see what happens.'
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
US strike on Iran would bring peril at every turn
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a defiant response to Trump's call for 'unconditional surrender', but Trump said there were indications that the Iranians wanted to talk. There were also reports of an official Iranian plane landing in Oman, where many of the negotiations with Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, had taken place before Israel's attack. If Trump is taking a pause, it may be because the list of things that could go wrong is long, and probably incomplete. There's the obvious: It's possible that a B-2 could get shot down, despite Israel's success in taking out so many of Iran's air defences. It's possible the calculations are wrong, and even America's biggest conventional bomb can't get down that deep. 'I've been there, it's half a mile underground,' Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week, as the Israeli operation began. But assuming that the operation itself is successful, the largest perils may lie in the aftermath, many experts say, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are many lessons from that ugly era of misbegotten American foreign policy, but the most vital may be that it's the unknown unknowns that can come back to bite. Iran has vowed that if attacked by US forces, it would strike back, presumably against the US bases spread around the Middle East and the growing number of assets gathering in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. All are within missile range, assuming Iran has missiles and launchers left after the Israelis are done with their systematic targeting. Of course, that could start a cycle of escalation: If Americans are killed, or even injured, Trump will be under pressure to exact revenge. 'Subcontracting the Fordow job would put the United States in Iran's sights,' Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, and Steven Simon, a veteran of the National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week. 'Iran would almost certainly retaliate by killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United States to reciprocate. 'Soon enough, the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime's leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change business – a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be involved any longer.' The reaction could take other forms. Iran is skilled at terrorism, and reacted to the US-Israeli cyberattack on its nuclear program 15 years ago by building a fearsome cyber corps – not as stealthy as China's or as bold as Russia's, but capable of considerable damage. And it has plenty of short-range missiles left to attack oil tankers, making transit in the Persian Gulf too risky. The last thing the White House wants to do is air these risks in public. Democrats are calling for a congressional role, but they have no power to compel it. 'Given the potential for escalation, we must be brought into this decision,' Senator Adam Schiff of California, one of Trump's political rivals, said on CNN on Wednesday. 'Bombing Fordow would be an offensive activity.' And like most offensive activities, there are longer-term perils, beyond the cycle of attack and retaliation. Already the message of these past five days, as interpreted by Iranian leaders or others with nuclear skill, may well be that they should have raced for a bomb earlier, and more stealthily. That was what North Korea did, and it has now ended up with 60 or more nuclear weapons, despite years of American diplomacy and sabotage. It is a big enough arsenal to assure that its adversaries, South Korea and the US, would think twice about conducting the kind of operation that Israel executed against Iran. And history suggests that nuclear programs can be bombed, but not eliminated. 'Nuclear weapons can be stopped through force – the Syrian program is a good example,' said Gary Samore, who was the Obama administration's co-ordinator for weapons of mass destruction when the existence of the Fordow plant was made public. And in Iraq, after the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981, to keep Saddam Hussein from getting the fuel for a bomb, the Iraqis 'reacted by building a huge, secret program' that went undetected until after the Gulf War in 1991, Samore said. That was such an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies that more than a decade later they wildly overestimated his ability to do it again, contributing to the second failure – and leading the US into the Iraq War. But Samore added: 'I can't think of a case where air power alone was sufficient to end a program.' That is an important consideration for Trump. He must decide in the next few days whether Israel's attacks on Iran's Natanz enrichment facility, and its bombing of workshops where new centrifuges are made and laboratories where weapons research may have been taking place, are sufficient to set back the Iranian program. In short, he must decide whether it is worth the huge risk of direct US involvement for whatever gain would come from destroying Fordow with American pilots, American warplanes and American weapons. But he also doesn't want to be accused of missing the chance to set the Iranians back by years. 'If this war ends and this Fordow is left intact, then it wouldn't take long to get this going again,' said Samore, now a professor at Brandeis University. Trump has not weighed these questions in public, and it is always hard to know how he is assessing the evidence. He bristled the other day when a reporter noted to him that his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified in Congress just a few months ago that Iran had made no decision to produce a bomb. Loading Trump insisted that there wasn't much time left – though he cited no evidence to contradict his own intelligence chief. 'Don't forget, we haven't been fighting,' Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office. 'We add a certain amount of genius to everything, but we haven't been fighting at all. Israel's done a very good job today.' Then, muddying the waters anew, he turned to his signature phrase: 'But we'll see what happens.'
