Sergey Lavrov in Tehran announces return of Russian specialists to Bushehr

Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, who arrived in Tehran on the afternoon of Monday, 19 October 2026, said in a meeting with Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic's foreign minister, that Russian specialists who left the Bushehr nuclear power plant during the war are gradually returning to it. DIAR's earlier report had covered his arrival in Tehran, his first trip to Iran since the war began.

On this trip Lavrov tied the reopening of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to guaranteeing the Islamic Republic's immunity from renewed attacks, and backed as a framework for de-escalation the memorandum between the United States and the Islamic Republic, mediated by Pakistan and known as the Islamabad memorandum, which collapsed after the Islamic Republic's attacks on commercial ships. He also stressed Moscow's commitment to its 20-year strategic cooperation treaty with the Islamic Republic. Lavrov was due to meet Masoud Pezeshkian as well on Monday night.

The Islamic Republic's officials' claims about the Strait of Hormuz

Abbas Araghchi called the current insecurity in the Strait of Hormuz a direct result of American and Israeli military attacks and said the region's problems have no military solution. He once again lashed out at European countries, accusing them, like the United States, of "wrong calculations".

At the same time, Mohammad Reza Aref, Pezeshkian's first vice president, claimed that the Islamic Republic has no choice but to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz to preserve its security, and that the United States must pay the cost of the current situation. A spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claimed that the United States had violated Article 5 of the memorandum by pressuring Oman, and that the IRGC had in response "pulled the trigger". This comes as the Islamic Republic itself turned the Strait of Hormuz into a battlefield through attacks on tankers and threats to shipping, and according to CENTCOM, the United States has since late June redirected 138 vessels in enforcing its naval blockade of the Islamic Republic's ports.

Lavrov's trip after a request from the Persian Gulf states

Before Tehran, Lavrov had held talks in Manama with the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council; countries that at the same meeting asked Moscow to use its influence to push the Islamic Republic into serious talks and the reopening of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Lavrov's remarks in Tehran, however, were less a pressure on the Islamic Republic than a reflection of Tehran's demands: linking the reopening of the strait to guarantees for the security of the government, and a return to the framework of a memorandum that the Islamic Republic itself trampled by attacking ships.

In Tehran, Lavrov tied the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to guaranteeing the Islamic Republic's immunity from fresh attacks.