By Simon Robinson
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Iranian society was consolidating around the Islamic Republic’s leadership when asked by Reuters if he agreed with Israeli statements about possible regime change in Tehran.
Putin was speaking as Trump kept the world guessing whether the U.S. would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear and missile sites and as residents of Iran’s capital streamed out of the city on the sixth day of the air assault.
Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.
Asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that regime change in Iran could be the result of Israel’s military attacks and U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand for Iran’s unconditional surrender, Putin said that one should always look at whether or not the main aim was being achieved before starting something.
“We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there…that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin told senior news agency editors in the northern Russian city of St Petersburg.
Putin said he had personally been in touch with Trump and with Netanyahu, and that he had conveyed Moscow’s ideas on resolving the conflict.
He said Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities were still intact.
“These underground factories, they exist, nothing has happened to them,” Putin said, adding that all sides should seek a resolution that ensured the interests of both Iran and Israel.
“It seems to me that it would be right for everyone to look for ways to end hostilities and find ways for all parties to this conflict to come to an agreement with each other,” Putin said. “In my opinion, in general, such a solution can be found.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday that Moscow was telling the United States not to strike Iran because it would radically destabilise the Middle East.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry also warned that Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclar facilities risked triggering a nuclear catastrophe.
(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Gleb Bryanski in St Petersburg, Russia, Anastasia Lyrchikova and Dmitry Antonov in Moscow and Darya Korsunskaya in London; editing by Guy Faulconbridge/Andrew Osborn)
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