Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei asks Putin to do more after U.S. strikes

Iran’s supreme leader sent his Foreign Minister to Moscow on Monday (June 23, 2025) to ask President Vladimir Putin for more help from Russia after the biggest U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution over the weekend.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel have publicly speculated about killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and about regime change, a step Russia fears could further destabilise West Asia.

While Mr. Putin has condemned the Israeli strikes, he has yet to comment on the U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites though he last week called for calm and offered Moscow’s services as a mediator over the nuclear programme.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was due to deliver a letter from Mr. Khamenei to Mr. Putin, seeking the latter’s backing, a senior source said.

Iran has not been impressed with Russia’s support so far, Iranian sources said, and the country wants Mr. Putin to do more to back it against Israel and the United States. The sources did not elaborate on what assistance Tehran wanted.

The Kremlin said that Mr. Putin would receive Mr. Araghchi but did not say what would be discussed.

Mr. Araqchi was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying that Iran and Russia were coordinating their positions on the current escalation in the Middle East.

Russia, a longstanding ally of Tehran, plays a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the West as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier nuclear deal Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.

But Putin, whose army is fighting a major war of attrition in Ukraine for the fourth year, has shown little appetite for a confrontation with the U.S. over Iran just as Trump seeks to repair ties with Moscow.