Intel: How Trump's 'maximum pressure' campaign is bringing Iran and Russia closer together

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's long-planned visit to Moscow today quickly turned into a grievance-sharing session with his counterpart Sergey Lavrov about the Donald Trump administration.

Coming just as Iran announced it was rolling back some of its nuclear commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal and as the United States unveiled new sanctions on Iran's metallurgical sector, the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) dominated the agenda. Lavrov called the situation unacceptable and “triggered by the irresponsible behavior of the United States,” while stressing that Moscow “appreciated the Iranian commitment” to stay in the deal regardless of the announced caveats.

Beside the JCPOA, the two top diplomats covered a broad range of other bilateral interactions, from Syria to Central Asia.

Why it matters: Russia doesn’t always see eye to eye with Iran in Syria. But the bottom-line necessity to have a stable relationship in their broader common neighborhood has brought the two countries closer together, especially in the face of mounting economic, political and military pressures from the United States. A day before Zarif’s visit, the Russian Foreign Ministry in a special memo described Iran as “a long-time predictable partner of Moscow in the Middle East region.”