MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will convey to Iran concerns among Arab leaders about Tehran’s strikes on oil infrastructure in the region, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, as the Iran conflict continued to widen.
Putin held a flurry of phone calls on Monday with four Arab Gulf state leaders, offering to use Moscow’s ties to Tehran – with which it has a strategic partnership – to try and defuse tensions in the region.
“Putin will certainly make every effort to contribute to at least a slight easing of tensions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.
“Yesterday’s discussions with virtually all of his interlocutors focused on Putin conveying his deep concern about the strikes on their infrastructure to our colleagues in Iran, taking advantage of the dialogue we maintain with the Iranian leadership.”
Oil prices rose on Tuesday for a third day as Iran responded to U.S. and Israeli attacks with strikes against energy infrastructure in Gulf countries and against tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
Putin offered his condolences to the family of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a note to President Masoud Pezeshkian over the weekend, but the Kremlin has not publicised any further contact with senior Iranian leadership since the strikes began on Saturday.
Putin has also not spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump, and Peskov said there were no plans for such a conversation at this time.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Aidan Lewis)
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