TEHRAN, Iran — With a raft of nuclear talks penciled in for the UN General Assembly (Sept. 24-Oct. 2) and a Russian plan to pluck Syrian chemical weapons from state hands, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani doubtless had plenty to discuss with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit on Sept. 13-14.
But Rouhani’s two-day trip to the SCO Summit was also about meeting Central Asian’s top brass to make good on his campaign promise of pursuing a policy of “regionalism.”