US President Donald Trump and Israel have publicly speculated about killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and about regime change, a step Russia fears could further destabilize the Middle East. 

While Putin has condemned the Israeli strikes, he has yet to comment on the US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites though he last week called for calm and offered Moscow's services as a mediator over the nuclear programme. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi was due to deliver a letter from Khamenei to Putin, seeking the latter's backing, a senior source told Reuters. 

Iran has not been impressed with Russia's support so far, Iranian sources told Reuters, and the country wants Putin to do more to back it against Israel and the US. 

The sources did not elaborate on what assistance Tehran wanted. 

The Kremlin said that Putin would receive Araqchi but did not say what would be discussed. 

Araqchi was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying that Iran and Russia were co-ordinating their positions on the current escalation in the Middle East. 

Russia, a longstanding ally of Tehran, plays a role in Iran's nuclear negotiations with the West as a veto-wielding United Nations Security Council member and signatory to an earlier nuclear deal Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. 

But Putin, whose army is fighting a major war of attrition in Ukraine for the fourth year, has shown little appetite for a confrontation with the US over Iran just as Trump seeks to repair ties with Moscow. 

--Reuters--