TEHRAN — Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged Monday to negotiate with Iran on behalf of the international community in their nuclear standoff, although he didn’t travel to Tehran as scheduled amid warnings of a possible assassination plot.
Putin’s planned trip, the first to Tehran by a Kremlin leader since World War II, raised hopes that personal diplomacy could find a solution to the impasse over the Iranian nuclear program. But he delayed his arrival, which had been set for Monday evening.
The Russian leader insisted to reporters in Germany that he was going ahead with the trip, but the Kremlin declined to discuss details. The official Iranian news agency said late Monday that Putin had only put off his trip by several hours and would be in Tehran early today in time for a Caspian-region summit.
Iran gave no further details, and Kremlin officials wouldn’t comment on the reason for the delay or say exactly when Putin would arrive.
Putin’s trip was first thrown into doubt when the Kremlin said Sunday that he had been informed by Russian special services that suicide attackers might try to kill him in Tehran.
But he shrugged off the warning Monday.
“Of course I am going to Iran,” he said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “If I always listened to all the various threats and the recommendations of the special services, I would never leave home.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini dismissed reports about the purported assassination plot as disinformation spread by adversaries hoping to spoil good relations between Russia and Iran.
Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program. He insists that peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Tehran’s defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.
“Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere,” Putin said in Germany. “They are not afraid, believe me.”
Iran’s rejection of the council’s demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons.
Iran insists it is only wants lesser-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.
Putin’s Tehran visit would be the first such trip by a Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin attended a 1943 wartime summit with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia’s carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff.
