Seven days have passed since Wang Yi flew to Tehran and met Araghchi. Moscow has said nothing. [1]

As the paper's May 12 account of how Russia and Iran rejections narrowed Trump's mediation claims established, Moscow's position was already a complication for the diplomacy — seven days of silence on China's subsequent move has now made that position explicit.

The silence is now comprehensive. Russia has not commented on China's May 6 mediation push. It has not commented on Pakistan's proposal to serve as a back-channel between Tehran and Washington. It has not commented on whether the Trump-Xi summit — which reportedly put Iran on the agenda as the first of five items — produced any framework Russia was consulted on. The Kremlin's press service has confirmed none of it, denied none of it, and framed none of it.

This is deliberate. Russia's strategic position in the current Iran crisis has always been more complicated than its UN veto record suggests. Moscow sells Iran weapons, coordinates with Iran in Syria, and benefits from the oil-price pressure that a Hormuz crisis creates for Western markets. But Russia is also not Iran's patron in the way China has positioned itself. A negotiated de-escalation that produces a US-Iran deal — even a temporary one — would reduce one of the few remaining levers that makes Russia strategically relevant in the Middle East.

Silence costs Moscow nothing and preserves options. [2] If the diplomacy collapses, Russia loses nothing by having stayed out. If it succeeds, Russia can position itself as a necessary party to any implementation framework without having had to endorse the process that got there.

What Russian silence rules out is the simplest reading: that Moscow is simply uninformed. The FSB tracks these channels in detail. The Kremlin knows what Wang Yi said in Tehran. Its decision not to respond is the response.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow