U.S. has no clear exit strategy from Iran war: Russia’s UK ambassador

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is a “misadventure” whose goals and exit strategy remain unclear, Russia’s ambassador to the U.K. told CNBC.

Andrey Kelin said Russia has “a lot of sympathy” with Tehran and said “the best end” to the escalating Middle East war is for it to “show only that they are senseless.”

“We still are trying to understand, what are the goals of President Trump in this campaign. You know that lots of doubts have been expressed about the exit strategy that the American administration can have in this endeavour,” Kelin told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick in an interview recorded on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, earlier this week, offering his “unwavering support” to Tehran and saying the country “has been and will remain the Islamic Republic’s reliable partner.”

The war has been raging for two weeks, with heavy strikes reported across Iran’s capital city and shipping traffic through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz severely disrupted.

The White House has said the objectives of Operation Epic Fury have been to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and production capacity and its navy, sever its support for proxies in other countries and ensure Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon.

The White House said on Thursday these objectives “have remained unchanged unambiguous, and consistent” since the operation began on Feb. 28.

“We have a lot of sympathy with Iran. We have a lot of sympathy as well with the Persian Gulf states, there is no doubt at all. As for the beginning, I cannot understand the position of when everybody is blaming Iran,” Kelin said.

“[The] crisis has started with the, as I have said, with Israel and U.S. aggression against Iran and it was in the middle of talks, of course,” he continued, referring to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program held in the Swiss city of Geneva last month.

“My president discussed this issue with the president of the United States, and we can make a good contribution by the way to finish it, to wrap it up.”

CNBC has contacted a spokesperson at the White House and Israel’s Foreign Ministry and is awaiting a response.

Alongside China, which has received millions of barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz even as war chokes the waterway, Russia stands as one of Iran’s most influential diplomatic partners.

“We have a strategic partnership with Iran. We are not allied in military terms, but we have a strategic partnership, and we have got…