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Any comparison of anti-Russian and anti-Iranian sanctions is wrong - Russian lawmaker

MOSCOW, November 17 /TASS/. It is not quite right to draw parallels between sanctions imposed against Russia and anti-Iranian sanctions, Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, said on Monday upon arrival from a visit to Teheran.

“Sanctions are different. For instance, some sanctions were unilaterally imposed against Iran by the United States and Europeans, others were adopted by the United Nations Security Council,” Pushkov said, adding that sanctions of the United Nations Security Council were linked with the problem of nuclear non-proliferation and Iran’s suspected plans to build nuclear weapons.

“Russia has never had to face United Nations Security Council sanctions because it is its member,” he said. But “Russia is facing illegal sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and some other states.”

“This is not the situation Iran is, so I think the sanctions are not symmetrical,” the Russian lawmaker noted. “Both countries however are against the use of sanctions as an instrument of solving international problems and influencing other states. Nonetheless, comparing these sanctions is non-productive, since their nature is different.”

Also Naryshkin has used his working trip to Iran to explain Russia’s stance on the Ukraine crisis to Iranian politicians, Pushkov told journalists.

“The Ukraine crisis was certainly part of the agenda. The Iranian side listened to all Russian assessments given by the State Duma speaker very attentively,” Pushkov who had accompanied Naryshkin in his Iranian trip said onboard of a plane on the way back to Moscow. “It was very important (for Iranian colleagues) to get first hand information about the events in Ukraine from Russian politicians because we are better informed of what’s going on in Ukraine,” Pushkov said.

The Iranian officials, for their part, paid great attention to regional issues. They told their Russian colleagues what they thought about the situation in Syria, about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and a terrorist threat in the Middle East, the Russian deputy said.

During his working visit to Tehran, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin met Ali Larijani, speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of Expediency Discernment Council of Iran.