Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel to Moscow next week to meet with Vladimir Putin, in hopes to ratchet up support from his Russian comrade regarding Iran's uranium enrichment program.
A presidential aide to Putin said the two will meet in the capital city at some point next week.
Putin will be in China on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Iran has been under international pressure to halt uranium enrichment, which they say is needed for nuclear power plants that will be used for power generation. But much of the West, led by the U.S. and Israel, believes otherwise. Tehran has rejected claims that it was making weapons grade uranium, insisting it is pursuing a purely civilian program. Several Western powers have called for harsher sanctions against Tehran if it does not agree to halt uranium enrichment altogether as Iran continues to move its facilities deeper into the mountains to protect from missile attacks.
Ahmadinejad said on French television on May 30 that he did not "expect miracles" from the upcoming talks in Moscow this week.
The Kremlin does not want to fully support the Western coalition against Iran for practical reasons that have little if anything to do with Putin, wrote Nikolay Kozhanov is a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute in a brief policy report published on the Institute's website May 2.
Given the outcomes in Iraq and Libya, Russia has learned that the fall of old allies inevitably leads to the loss of economic and political influence in those countries. Whether Russia stays out of the conflict as it did in Iraq or unobtrusively helps to overthrow its old allies as it did in Libya (Moscow was the first government to stop exports of military equipment to Qadhafi), the result is always the same, Kozhanov wrote: Russia has been compelled to leave countries liberated from dictators.
"Without solid guarantees regarding the security of its interests, Russia has been fighting hard for Syria (one of its last stands in the Arab Middle East) while protecting Iran from the prospect of military strikes. Russia values Tehran's help in promoting peace and stability throughout the Caspian coast and Central Asia, in trying to limit the presence of third countries in regional affairs, in counteracting human and drug trafficking, and in deterring the spread of internal revolutions," Kozhanov said in the brief.
See: Where Iran's Uranium Enrichment Facilities Are Located -- Ria Novosti
