Expert: Iran can’t benefit from Ukraine crisis for gas exports

Speaking in an interview with Entekhab News Website, Alireza Soltani also said the Russians will use all tools at their disposal to prevent Europe from ending its dependence on Russian gas.

Meanwhile, Soltani underlined that Iran is also incapable of selling gas to Europe due to economic, technical and political difficulties.

According to the analyst, politically, Iran’s presence in the European gas market is opposed by the big powers; economically it costs too much, and technically it requires the presence of world-class companies, and it is certainly very difficult to provide such economic, political and technical conditions for Iran’s presence in the European gas market.

He added that Iran itself is not willing to antagonize Russia by trying to make inroads in the European gas market, it wants to position Russia as a strategic partner.

Soltani also maintained that Iran can only compensate for part of the shortage of Russian gas exports to Europe by activating a pipeline to Russia that was built under the previous regime and sending gas to the Russian transmission network.

He said in this way, it may be possible to encourage the Russians to take action on Iranian gas.

Elsehwre, Soltani spoke of the prospects of the military tension between Russia and Ukraine backed by its allies. He said chances of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is very low as the age of such conflicts is over and that Russia and the West have reached enough political maturity to not get themselves bogged down in such a costly war.

Soltani added that Russian President Vladimir Putin aims to stop NATO’s eastward expansion and the West is trying to check Putin’s expansionist moves.