Free Republic

MOSCOW – Iran intends to seriously strengthen relations with Russia, and resolve controversial issues in cooperation with each other, Iranian First Vice President of Iran Mohammad Reza Aref said on Monday. “I am very pleased with the good pace at which our relations are developing at all levels. I would like to emphasize that the new Iranian government is serious about strengthening our relations,” Mohammad Reza Aref said during talks with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. -snip- “Relations between Russia and Iran have a centuries-old history, based on the principles of friendship, good neighborliness and mutual respect. And Russia is...

The Kremlin on Monday condemned the killing of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli air attack last week and said it assessed the risk of a major Middle East war as "extremely high". "The Russian side condemns such actions, we believe that they have led to a significant destabilisation of the situation in the region," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "The main thing is that such indiscriminate bombing of residential areas in Lebanon leads to a huge number of human casualties, which will inevitably bring on a humanitarian catastrophe like the one we are seeing in Gaza,"...

Opponents of Israel and allies of Hezbollah and Iran on Saturday condemned the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, after the Lebanon-based terrorist group confirmed his death in an Israeli strike on south Beirut a day earlier. Among those expressing outrage at Israel’s actions were Hamas, Turkey, Russia, Yemen’s Houthis and Iraq. Hamas in a statement said: “We condemn in the strongest terms this barbaric Zionist aggression and targeting of residential buildings… and we consider it a cowardly terrorist act.” It offered “condolences, and solidarity with the brothers in Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon on the martyrdom of…...