Moscow, Russia. While the western world stays focused on North Korea, Russia is moving ahead in positive directions and helping Iran rejoin the international community of nations.
The Shanghai Five is a alliance originally devised as a confidence-building forum between neighbors in Central Asia to cooperate in fighting radical insurgent groups and demilitarize borders
Russia will support Iran joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an emerging economic and political alliance led by China, often considered a counterweight to Western alliance organizations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Iran fully fits the criteria for membership of the Shanghai Five and said that discussions on its bid to join will take place this summer.
Iran has expressed a wish to become full member of group under both former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and current leader Hassan Rouhani and was given observer status in 2005, allowing it to attend summits.
The country now “fully meets the criteria for membership,” Lavrov told journalists at the end of a meeting of the group’s foreign ministers, and added that the possibility of offering Iran a full place in the organization will be on the agenda in the upcoming meeting of the bloc in Kazakhstan in June.
The Shanghai Five policy objectives, particularly in military cooperation, have so far been limited. However, the group notably rejected the U.S. from gaining observer status in the past, leaving the impression that its goal is to opose Western political and military alliances.