Iran’s foreign minister is considering visiting Japan on Monday and meeting with Prime Minister Kishida.

TOKYO (Kyodo News Agency) – Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian is considering visiting Japan on Monday to meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a Japanese government source said on Friday.

The meeting was scheduled against the backdrop of Western suspicions that Iran supplied Russia with weapons it used in its war on Ukraine. Kishida is likely to raise the issue in the talks, the sources said, with Tokyo aiming to use its relationship with Tehran to help end the protracted war.

The source said Kishida will express Japan’s position at the meeting organized at Iran’s request that Japan does not tolerate any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force, given Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine since last February.

Amir Abdullahian also plans to hold a one-on-one meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Ling Jizheng. He will be the first Iranian foreign minister to visit Japan since President Ibrahim Raisi took office in August 2021.

Japan holds this year’s chairmanship of the Group of Seven, which has maintained economic sanctions on Russia because of the war.

Iran has been severely condemned by the United States, Britain and the European Union for supplying military equipment such as drones to Russia.