Elena Teslova
15 July 2020•Update: 15 July 2020
MOSCOW
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that sanctions against Iran have no chance of succeeding, the Kremlin said.
In a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin urged preservation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Russian side considers a chief tool for resolving concerns over Iran nuclear researches.
"The Russian president stressed the hopelessness of sanctions and pressure on Tehran in this regard and the importance of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iran nuclear program, approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2231," a Kremlin statement said.
On June 30, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the UN Security Council to extend an arms embargo against Iran and warned that ending it would risk stability in the Middle East.
Pompeo said Iran could directly move to buy Russian fighter jets and upgrade its submarine fleet if the embargo expires and Tehran would be "free to become a rogue weapons dealer, supplying arms to fuel conflicts from Venezuela, to Syria, to the far reaches of Afghanistan."
On Libya, Putin and Merkel expressed agreement over "the need to overcome the crisis in this country exclusively by political and diplomatic methods" through establishment of an inter-Libyan dialogue as prescribed by the decisions of January’s Berlin conference, approved by the UN Security Council.
Libya has been torn by civil war since the ouster of late ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Libya's new government was founded in 2015 under a UN-led agreement, but efforts for a long-term political settlement failed due to the military offensive by warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces.
On the situation in Ukraine, Putin and Merkel "negatively evaluated" Ukrainian authorities’ call to revise the 2015 Minsk agreements, citing them as "the only basis for settlement of the internal Ukrainian conflict."
The agreements, signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany and overseen by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), were drafted to stop hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
