NEW DELHI, May 15. /TASS/. America's interest in Iran boils down to one thing today – oil, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested at a press conference following his participation in the BRICS ministerial meeting in New Delhi.

"When this aggression against Iran was concocted, the declared goal was clear: to put an end to 47 years of Iran allegedly terrorizing all its neighbors and the entire surrounding world. Just as they invented the drug trafficking narrative to kidnap the President of Venezuela, and then it turned out that it was not about drug trafficking at all, but about Venezuelan oil that the US had its sights set on. And now with Iran, everything boils down to oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

"But it was not Iran that blocked this situation; it was not Iran that created the problem, including with the Gulf countries," the minister added.

Lavrov recalled that Russia had for many years proposed a Security Concept for the Persian Gulf, which involved starting a process of normalizing relations and building trust between Iran and the Arab monarchies with the participation of their neighbors, the League of Arab States, and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

"Because in a situation where the Arabs and Iran were hostile to each other, it was abnormal and only harmed the peoples of the respective countries," he noted. "Tehran also expressed readiness to support such an approach even before the current crisis. And in my ongoing contacts with representatives of the Arab monarchies – and we are in regular contact – I sense that they also understand the need for precisely such an approach."